Covid vaccine to be given from Tuesday
NHS boss says doses will probably be administered from Tuesday next week
Last updated 7th Dec 2020
Covid-19 vaccinations could start being administered in England from Tuesday next week according to an NHS boss.
Chris Hopson is the chief executive of NHS Providers, he confirmed the 50 NHS hubs have already received the vaccines and will start the vaccinations next week, probably as early as Tuesday.
The vaccines will be given at hospital hubs as it has to be kept in minus 70c conditions so is very difficult to store anywhere else.
Mr Hopson also raised that as one of the key difficulties in rolling the vaccine out:
Chris Hopson said hospitals are working out how many care home residents, care home staff and over-80s they can get to, he told BBC Breakfast:
“Each one of those groups has a different set of characteristics in terms of the logistical difficulty of doing the vaccination,” he said, pointing out that the vaccine needs to be transported at minus 70C.
“Think of a large pizza box, is the way that we’re describing it, that’s got to be stored in a fridge at minus 70C.
“To be frank, the only way you can really do that at the moment is to store them inside NHS hospital hubs.
“You can only move them four times, and you have to ensure that the two doses are administered three weeks apart, so it’s quite complex.
Hospitals to talk to care homes
Continuing to explain the plan for the vaccine rollout, NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said: “We are identifying in hospitals how many over-80s do we have, either currently receiving treatment inside the hospital or people who are coming in for outpatient appointments.
“So, what we’re going to be doing is, hospitals are at the moment talking to care home providers to say how can we get your staff to come into those hospital hubs so we can inject them.”
“The bit on the care home residents is more complex because the other thing I haven’t said to you is that these come, the pizza boxes, come in 975 batches.
“And we obviously don’t have care homes that have got 975 residents in them. You tend to have them as 50s, 30s, 60s.
“So what you would need to do is break those 975 pizza boxes into smaller batches, and then the good news is, when we can do that, which we think we’ll be able to do really quite quickly, is we can then ask GPs to go in and administer the vaccine into care home residents.
Most people that need it will be vaccinated by March
Mr Hopson said he is not aware of any target for the number of vaccines to be administered on Tuesday, but said “clearly as many as possible”, adding that the bulk of the programme would be done in the first three months of 2021.
“So what hospitals are doing is they’re working out today, yesterday, the day before, tomorrow, they’re going to be working out exactly how many of those care home staff, care home residents, and over-80s they can administer, they’re going to tell NHS England and Improvement what those figures are, and then the vaccines will be allocated depending upon how many people they can get through.”
“We’ve mobilised at real speed, this is really exciting, we know we’ve got to get this right. It’s the kind of thing the NHS does really well,” he said, adding: “It’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. We’re looking forward to the race starting on Tuesday.”