Vaccines save millions of lives and the public should listen to people with medical qualifications.

This is the message from Dr Hilary Jones who appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier today.

He was addressing concerns that the government are considering using emergency powers to allow the rolling out an unlicenced coronavirus vaccine.

Speaking on the programme, the Basingstoke doctor said “unlicenced” did not mean unsafe or not tested.

He urged the public to listen to people with medical qualifications over those who had a “superstitious view”.

The doctor, who once worked at Basingstoke hospital, said: “Eleven percent of medicines we use in general practices are unlicensed, it doesn't mean to say they are not safe, they've all been tested for safety but are used in special circumstances."

When asked how to reassure people the vaccines are safe to take, Dr Hilary said that could be done through giving people the correct information.

He said: “You give them the knowledge, the informative sense before they have a vaccination. You look to people in the know, you don’t listen to people who don’t have any medical qualifications, you don’t listen to people who have a superstitious view on anything that could possibly do harm when there is no apparent danger.

“Where there is an apparent danger [right now] is this very dangerous virus. It has a much higher mortality rate than ordinary flu. [The vaccine] will have been tried and tested on tens of thousands of patients and will have gone through all phase one, two or three studies to show that it is effective and has a good safety level.”

The Basingstoke doctor urged people to listen to the professionals and stated that the public should be provided with the correction information.

“I don’t believe the government is saying they wouldn’t have some sort of system in place for the very occasional side effect that might occur when we do that for all other available vaccines. I think that is pandering unfortunately to the growing trend of anti-vaccination feelings and that’s very dangerous because vaccinations save countless million lives.”

He went onto say one in four children used to die before current vaccinations.

“Current vaccinations are extremely safe. If you look at meningitis which had  a mortality rate of 10 per cent before vaccinations were introduced, the death rate has plunged to nearly nothing since a vaccination was introduced 20 years ago.”