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OPINION - Merry Christmas from Saj!* (*Ts & Cs apply)

 (West End Final)
(West End Final)

Is taking a lateral flow test before a social gathering the new bringing a bottle of wine to the Christmas party? Not legally required, but more likely get you a future invite.

Well, it’s the advice of the Health Secretary, who has urged the public to be “sensible” during the festive season. This is the same Sajid Javid who apparently reads the courtroom scene from Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ twice a year.

Objectivism aside, all eyes will be on whether and how the Government meets its target of offering a third dose to all over-18s in England by the end of January.

Supply is not an issue, but capacity is. At the peak of the vaccine rollout last spring, roughly four million doses were being administered a week. At present, it is closer to 2.5 million boosters (plus an additional 350,000 first and second doses).

So that will need to be ramped up again, with pharmacies and an army of volunteers required to meet the challenge. Javid said the NHS is working to temporarily suspend some of the workloads of GPs so they can concentrate on the vaccination programme.

That may prove necessary, but it will add to concerns that the backlog of cancelled operations and missed check-ups will grow larger still, with a substantial impact on mortality rates into the future.

Elsewhere in the paper, Boris Johnson did not deny that a “boozy” Christmas party was held in Number 10 during lockdown last year but insisted that no rules were broken.

In the comment pages, Tom Newton Dunn writes that we must bite the bullet on online anonymity to defeat the trolls.

Meanwhile, City Editor Oscar Williams-Grut says it’s getting harder and harder to ignore cryptocurrency.

And finally, we can reveal the best (and worst) celebrity cookbooks of 2021 through the old fashioned try and taste measure. Because why enjoy Ottolenghi when you can have a bowl of Drew Barrymore.

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