Practices and other NHS services have been asked to give priority to the vaccine booster campaign – postponing routine appointments.

A statement last night by Prime Minister Boris Johnson was backed by a letter circulated to practices by NHS England. The UK is hoping to reach a million vaccinations a day in a massive drive to protect the population against the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.

In his televised address, Mr Johnson said: “As we focus on boosters and make this target achievable it will mean some other appointments will need to be postponed until the New Year. If we don’t do this now, the wave of Omicron could be so big that cancellations and disruption like the loss of cancer appointments would be even greater next year.”

NHS England meanwhile circulated a letter to practices signed by chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and Royal College of GPs chair Professor Martin Marshall, calling on GPs and their staff to devote their efforts to the booster campaign.

The letter, obtained by the Manchester Evening News, says: “We fully appreciate that any time vaccinating has a cost to other work, and has to be justified. The speed of onset and spread of the Omicron variant is remarkable. It is now doubling every two to three days and despite only recently having been established in the UK will shortly be the dominant variant in much of the country and is likely then to carry on rising.”

It goes on: “We have a very narrow window of opportunity to get as much of the population boosted (or vaccinated) as possible. This wave will be much larger in two to three weeks, and if it runs through an unboosted population the subsequent avoidable impact on the NHS, and almost certainly on severe disease and mortality will be significant. The NHS will then be hit with a large wave of patients at the worst time of the year, and at a point it is likely many colleagues will be ill, isolating or caring for family members due to the size of the wave.”

The letter states: “Now we need the experience and expertise of general practice to intensify the vaccination effort once again if we are to have any hope of replicating, at even greater speed, a similar degree of public protection. We understand and appreciate just how hard GPs are working to deliver essential care and services to patients, and we are very grateful to those practices who have already been able to accommodate the additional booster programme.

“We also realise that general practice is under significant strain, that frontline clinicians are worn-out, and that some of you have had to make tough decisions to step away from the programme to focus on other patient care priorities. We don’t underestimate the massive effort required nor the challenge of prioritising clinical care in an environment in which general practice’s contribution during the pandemic has not been appropriately recognised by some people. This will however be a time-limited effort – and one which is highly time sensitive. Only GPs can do this.”