Boris Johnson has criticised anti-Covid vaccine activists for spreading “nonsense” on social media, while stressing that he does not support moves to overtly pressure people into getting vaccinated. “I want to say to the anti-vax campaigners, the people who are putting this mumbo jumbo on social media: they are completely wrong,” Johnson told broadcasters on a visit to a vaccination centre in Moulton Park, Northampton. “You haven’t heard me say that before, because I think it’s important we have a voluntary approach in this country and we’re going to keep a voluntary approach.” While some other European countries were trying “coercion”, the prime minister said, this would not happen in England. But he added: “What a tragedy that we’ve got all this pressure on the NHS, all the difficulties that our doctors and nurses are experiencing, and we’ve got people out there spouting complete nonsense about vaccination. “They are totally wrong, and I think it’s time that I, the government, call them out on what they’re doing. It’s absolutely wrong, it’s totally counterproductive, and the stuff they’re putting out on social media is complete mumbo jumbo.” In an interview published on Wednesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, explained that it was his overt plan to make life difficult for unvaccinated citizens. Macron said he wanted to put them “in the shit” – using the verb emmerder, a vulgar slang term derived from merde (shit) – by “limiting as much as possible their access to activities in social life”. Macron said: “We have to tell [the unvaccinated] … you will no longer be able to go to a restaurant, you will no longer be able to go for a coffee, you will no longer be able to go to the theatre, you will no longer be able to go to the cinema. We will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.” Johnson’s approach for England – health policy is devolved between UK nations – is different, although he has introduced Covid passports, requiring proof of double-jabbed status or a recent negative test, for access to nightclubs and larger venues such as sports grounds. Even this was notably unpopular with Tory MPs, 101 of whom rebelled in a Commons vote in December, leaving him reliant on Labour support for the measure to pass. While the rollout of booster vaccinations, seen as key to protecting people against the Omicron variant, started rapidly, progress now appears to have stalled slightly, with almost 9 million eligible adults not yet having had one.