Boris Johnson’s target of 2m COVID-19 jabs a week by February

Nursing home residents, people over 70, frontline health and care workers and the clinically vulnerable will all be vaccinated by the middle of next month, Boris Johnson has optimistically claimed.

82-year-old Brian Pinker receives the Oxford University/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from nurse Sam Foster at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Nursing home residents, people over 70, frontline health and care workers and the clinically vulnerable will all be vaccinated by the middle of next month, Boris Johnson has optimistically claimed.

The British Prime Minister ­announced on Tuesday (AEDT) that the top four priority groups would have been offered the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by the middle of February.

“We are now rolling out the biggest vaccination program in our history,” he said. “So far, we in the UK have vaccinated more ­people than the rest of Europe combined. With the arrival today of the UK’s own Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the pace of vaccination is accelerating.

“By the middle of February, if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails, we expect to have ­offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.’’

The first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine were administered in Britain on Tuesday, and the ambitious aim is to inject two million people each week. About 530,000 doses will be available initially at six NHS hospital trusts in Oxford, Sussex, Lancashire, Warwickshire and two in London. The remaining bulk of the supplies will then be sent to more than 700 GP-led services and care homes.

The initial doses of the vaccine were manufactured in Europe, put into vials and packaged up before being taken to the UK, where they are now stored in secure sites. The batches are tested to ensure the vaccine’s quality and integrity meets national health standards.

The new vaccine is easier to transport and store than the other available in Britain, manufactured by Pfizer, which has to be kept at minus 70C. The Oxford vaccine is much cheaper, at £3 ($5.30) a dose compared with Pfizer’s £15, and can be kept in a normal fridge, making it suited to GPs, pharmacies and aged-care homes.

Professor Stephen Powis, of NHS England, said the vaccine would be delivered in about 100 hospital hubs and 700 centres in GP practices and in the community by the end of the week, with plans to expand as more supplies become available.

Asked when the NHS would be able to provide two million vaccines per week, Professor Powis said: “Certainly this month we’ll be able to get up to that sort of number but … this is dependent upon supply.”

More than 1.2 million Israelis, or about 14 per cent of the country’s population, have received their first dose of the vaccine.

The Times