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Australia’s prime minister has said he wants to make any potential Covid-19 vaccine mandatory as he outlined plans to “return the country to normal life” after battling a second wave of the virus. With governments around the world anticipating resistance to compulsory inoculation from anti-vaxx groups and a sceptical public, Scott Morrison said the aim was to get 95 per cent of the population to have the jab and that he was “expecting” that it would be compulsory except on medical grounds. “I would expect it to be as mandatory as you can possibly make,” Mr Morrison said in a radio interview. “We’re talking about a pandemic that has destroyed the global economy and taken the lives of hundreds of thousands all around the world, and over 430 Australians. So, you know, we need the most extensive and comprehensive response to this to get Australia back to normal.” But the difficulties in ensuring take-up of the vaccine were highlighted by a survey in the UK this month that concluded that only half of British people would definitely have a jab to guard against Covid-19. The coronavirus has now infected more than 22 million people around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University tracker, driven by continuing large numbers of cases in the United States, Brazil and India. More than 777,000 people have died.
