the four most vulnerable groups: nursing home residents and those who care for them, everyone over the age of 70, frontline health and social care workers, and extremely vulnerable individuals.

 Prime Minister Boris Johnson said England would be locked down until inoculations reached the four most vulnerable groups: nursing home residents and those who care for them, everyone over the age of 70, frontline health and social care workers, and extremely vulnerable individuals.

“If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus,” he said.

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London on Tuesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that England would be locked down until inoculations reached the four most vulnerable groups.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Mr. Johnson said that goal could be achieved by the middle of February, but that the pace of vaccinations would need to increase drastically.

The four groups he cited included 13.9 million people, according to Nadhim Zahawi, the minister overseeing the vaccine effort.

Since the campaign started on Dec. 8, 1.1 million people in England have been vaccinated, Mr. Johnson said Tuesday. Notably, 23 percent of people over 80 have gotten inoculations, and that age group could be fully vaccinated within three weeks, he said.

With the introduction on Monday of the first doses of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, British officials said the campaign could be ramped up.

To meet the February target, two million doses need to be given every week.