The UK Government say that they’re currently on target to vaccinate 14 million people by mid-February, with the current capacity for two million vaccinations per week. It is hoped that efforts will be amped up through vulnerable groups and tended to the rest of the country throughout the spring to allow for festivals to safely take place this summer.
Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic and boss of events including Reading & Leeds and Download Festival, told
NME: “I feel very positive because I know that it’s possible”.
The main stage at Leeds Festival 2019. (Photo by Katja Ogrin/Redferns)
When will the Covid-19 vaccine begin to have an effect on the nation? The government has pledged to offer vaccines to 15 million people – the over-70s, healthcare workers and those required to shield by mid-February, and millions more by spring. This should slowly bring the virus under control although it will take many weeks before we can be sure the vaccine is having an effect. Numbers of daily cases of Covid-19 may drop but that decline could.
Even though it’s been nearly three decades since I joined the
Observer, if I close my eyes I can still see my colleagues from yesteryear …
Jane Bown looking at a contact sheet by the lightbox, using her monocle eyeglass. Motorcycle couriers flirting with picture researchers. Reporters massaging the egos of alpha-male photographers, vying to become the next Don McCullin, the great photojournalist whose career began here. Men in shabby suits from now-defunct picture agencies, cigarette in hand as they hawked photo-essays from battered suitcases. The picture librarian ferrying files of black and white prints to the man who was at the centre of everything, the revered picture editor, Tony McGrath.