HOLIDAYS abroad should be off the cards until other countries have high levels of vaccination, experts in Scotland have warned.

And a massive increase in manufacturing capacity and distribution capacity is urgently needed to meet demand, according to Professor James Chalmers of the University of Dundee’s School of Medicine.

He said that if the UK rollout goes to plan the vast majority of the population will be vaccinated by July, meaning that the biggest threat at that stage would be the importation of a new variant resistant to the jags.

“That is a real danger because for example in France and other European countries the South African variant is now around 10 per cent of the strain circulating and that evades the AstraZeneca vaccine which is central to our vaccine programme,” he said.

“If that gets over here and becomes widespread it will put our entire strategy at risk which tells you the importance of vaccine and control measures in Europe. It is disastrous for us if there are big waves in France, Germany and other European countries because that increases the likelihood of the emergence of new variants or that the variants that already exist become more widespread and get imported into the UK.

“It is very much the case that it is not us versus them for the vaccine. We are in this together. We are so connected that we will be affected by whatever happens over there.”

Professor Chalmers said that even if there were a good vaccine rollout in Scotland and Covid rates were well under control, people going on holiday to places that did not have good vaccine coverage could bring back variants and seriously undermine the public health strategy here.

“We should holiday in the UK until we get to the point where other countries are protected and then we can have travel corridors to countries with high levels of vaccination,” he said.

As the panic in the EU continues over vaccine supplies, Professor Chalmers said it was in the interest of every country in the world to work together to enhance vaccine manufacturing capacity.

“The fights we see at the moment are caused by a lack of vaccine supply, so the only solution is to increase the amount of available vaccine worldwide as quickly as possible,” he said.

The World Health Organisation is calling on companies to license their vaccines to other companies and manufacturers, which they believe would greatly increase vaccine manufacture globally “There is already unprecedented collaboration among vaccine manufacturers but we need to do more,” said Professor Chalmers. “Some of the vaccine companies don’t want to share their technologies with other countries so governments have to look at how we can persuade them to work together to maximise vaccine manufacture.

“People can’t be dying because of intellectual property concerns or missing out on future profits. The priority globally is how we get maximum supply and distribution as quickly as possible.

“There are undoubtedly manufacturing facilities worldwide that could manufacture vaccines but are not doing so at the moment.”

He warned that the lack of manufacturing facilities could threaten the UK’s rollout too.

“It is not at all impossible that in a couple of months AstraZeneca or another manufacturer could say to us that some of their factories are not producing as much as they were hoping for, so we can’t be complacent - things can change between now and July,” said Professor Chalmers.

Professor Neil Mabbott, Chair of Immunopathology at the University of Edinburgh, also warned that people in the UK should be careful not to damage all the “great work” carried out so far.

“People may think that if they have been vaccinated it is not a problem to go on holiday abroad but they could bring back a new strain of the virus which isn’t as easily controlled by the vaccine and has the potential to spread like wildfire through the population,” he said.

“It is really important that people don’t start changing their behaviour until we are safe and we are not safe until everyone has been protected.”

He said that although he could understand why some politicians might want to restart non-essential foreign travel to help the beleaguered travel industry it would be wiser to be very cautious.

“If we establish a high level of immunity it would be a disaster to have that destroyed by people bringing in different strains of the virus which we can’t deal with,” said Professor Mabbott.

“If travel were to take place it would have to be carefully controlled with tests but I always say a test is out of date as soon as you have it. It has to be very effective and tracked and traced and people have to follow the quarantine rules as well which is difficult.”

Professor Mabbott also stressed it was imperative for the rest of the world to be vaccinated.

“Nobody is safe until everybody is safe and we won’t be able to go back to living with this virus in the same way as we live with flu until all parts of the world are covered,” he said.

“Global collaboration is essential to help achieve this, with projects such as COVAX working to ensure vaccines are delivered fairly across the world.”