Wednesday 18 May 2022 11:58 AM Jonathan Van-Tam could not attend his investiture... because he had Covid! trends now
Defensive midfielders
JVT, a fan of Boston United, likened the vaccination programme to defensive football players whose job it was to 'watch everybody's back'.
At a Downing Street press conference he said: 'A bit like a football game where the strikers who score the wonder goals are the ones who make the headlines, actually, the hard yards are done by the defenders and by the defensive midfielders tracking back, tracking back for 90 minutes of the whole game, watching everybody's back.
'This is what it's going to be about now, tracking back and making sure that we finish the job properly in the phase one cohorts before we move on.'
Grand National
He compared the pandemic to the Aintree horse race when he warned Britain could not fall at the final fence.
'The vaccine effects are going to take three months until we see them properly, and until then no-one can relax,' he told The Sun.
'We are probably in the last few furlongs of this race – like in the Grand National. We just have a couple more fences, we have just got to stick with it.'
Penalties
Football is a common tool used by JVT to explain Britain's progress through the coronavirus pandemic.
He once described the development of the Pfizer vaccine to reaching the penalties at the end of the play-off final.
'So this is like… getting to the end of the play-off final, it's gone to penalties, the first player goes up and scores a goal.
'You haven't won the cup yet, but what it does is, it tells you that the goalkeeper can be beaten.'
Landing a plane
The progress of the vaccine rollout has been compared to different forms of transport, including a plane coming in to land.
JVT said: 'Do I believe that we are now on the glide path to landing this plane? Yes I do.
'Do I accept that sometimes when you are on the glide path, you can have a side wind and the landing is not totally straightforward, totally textbook? Of course.'
Crowded trains
JVT said the pandemic was like waiting on a platform for a train, with the lights 'a long way off'.
He said: 'This to me is like a train journey, it's wet, it's windy, it's horrible.
'Two miles down the tracks, two lights appear and it's the train and it's a long way off and
