The UK will start administering the coronavirus vaccine "from early next week" - with 800,000 doses currently ready to be administered across the United Kingdom, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told MPs.
First in line for jabs will be residents in a care home for older adults, and their carers.
Sports venues and conference centres will eventually be used as mass-vaccination sites, Mr Hancock revealed.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: "I am delighted to confirm that the NHS wil be able to start vaccinating from early next week".
Millions of vaccinations could be carried out before the new year. But Mr Hancock said "the bulk of the vaccinations" will be in 2021.
"Over the next few months we will see vaccinations delivered in three different ways," said Mr Hancock.
Jabs will eventually be administered at major hospitals; GP surgeries and pharmacies, and at conference centres and sports venues, he said.
Downing Street says there will be no "immunity passport" allowing people who have received the vaccine to enjoy greater freedoms than those that are still waiting for it.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be filmed receiving his vaccination, Downing Street said. But the Prime Minister will not jump the queue, and will have to wait for the chance to receive a jab.
The first people to be vaccinated will receive jabs in this order
- Residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
- All those 80 years of age and over
- Frontline health and social care workers
- All those 75 years of age and over
- All those 70 years of age and over
- Clinically extremely vulnerable individuals
- All those 65 years of age and over
- All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and
- mortality
- All those 60 years of age and over
- All those 55 years of age and over
- All those 50 years of age and over
It comes after the UK became the first country in the world to approve a jab from Pfizer and BioNTech. The jab has been shown in studies to be 95% effective and works in all age groups.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises ministers, said vaccines should first be offered to elderly people in care homes and care home workers.
Other vaccines have also been developed. The Government has backed seven vaccines and ordered 357 million doses for the whole of the UK, Matt Hancock said.
The Health Secretary said he was unsure how many people need to be vaccinated before restrictions can be lifted.
He told the Commons: “The answer to that is while we know that the vaccine protects you as an individual with a 95% efficacy, we do not know the impact of the vaccine on reducing the transmission because of the problem of asymptomatic transmission – which has so bedevilled our response to this virus and made it so hard to tackle.
“Therefore we don’t know the answer to that question.
“What we will do is follow the same five indicators we were discussing at length yesterday, which are the indicators of the spread of the disease – we’ll look at the cases, the hospitalisations and, of course, the number of people who die with Covid.
“We would hope very much as we vaccinate more and more vulnerable people, we will see those rates come down and therefore we will be able to lift the restrictions. We will have to see how the vaccination programme impacts directly on the epidemic and then, of course, move as swiftly as we safely can to lift the restrictions that we all want to see gone.”
