by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo, Express:

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former Prime Minister said there is “no safety issue” in giving potential coronavirus treatments that are safe and meet a minimum level of efficacy to all patients in need. Mr Blair said that, rather than offering therapeutic drugs “only to those in the Recovery trial”, co-ordinated by the University of Oxford, any “hospitalised patients at risk of serious illness” should be offered drugs that are safe.

Asked whether he was suggesting doctors should start “injecting people”, he replied: “What I’m suggesting is you’ve got to interrogate this with the regulators and with the company.

“If you can be sure it is 40 to 50 percent effective, get it deployed now.

“Because if it is, by the way, it will save many lives.

“Now, it’s probably north of that, it’s probably 60 to 70 percent effective.

“My point is don’t just leave this to the normal process, interrogate it because if you do get to the point where you know that it’s at least reasonably effective, there’s no point in waiting to see whether it’s actually 60 or 70 percent effective, because even if it’s 40 percent effective, it’s definitely worth having.

“It’s important people understand that when we talk about the percentage of effectiveness, that doesn’t mean it works on 40 or 50 percent of people.

“It means it reduces the severity by 40 to 50 percent.

“But even that is worth having.

“And even if you don’t do this right now, at the moment we should be setting the vaccine registration system and starting to enrol people for when the vaccine will be available.

“So start for example with the frontline healthcare workers and then work your way through the most vulnerable parts of the population.”

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