UK PM Johnson: No decisions on exact date of opening of schools

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that they have not yet taken a decision on the exact date of opening of schools and added that they will do everything they can to reopen schools on March 8, as reported by Reuters.

Additional takeaways

"This has been an unbelievable effort to deliver the vaccine target."

"These vaccines are safe and will help defend people against disease and death."

"We need to look at the data - too many hospitalised and death numbers too high."

"We want to see progress that is cautious but irreversible."

"We would like to see rates of infection come down very low indeed."

"No vaccination programme is 100% effective."

"If we possibly can, we will be setting out target dates for earliest reopening."

"If you have loads of infected people then there are greater risks of new variants."

"We will try to set out a roadmap out of the lockdown."

"Inevitably, there will be great interest in ideas such as showing you have had a COVID-19 vaccine."

"We are not going to have vaccine passports to go to the pub in this country."

Market reaction

Risk flows continue to dominate financial markets after these comments. As of writing, the UK's FTSE 100 Index was up 1.35% on the day at 6,679.