Covid-19 vaccine arrives UK with first jabs starting at Sheffield hospitals 'from Tuesday'

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have been given the green light to start administering the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday, December 8 after it was chosen as one of the 53 trusts across the country to receive the jab first.

Chief executive of NHS Providers Chris Hopson told BBC Breakfast this morning that hospital hubs are now working out how many care home residents, care home staff and people aged over 80s they can get to.

There has been concern about how the vaccine will be transported as it needs to be kept at minus 70c before it is administered.

He said: “Each one of those groups has a different set of characteristics in terms of the logistical difficulty of doing the vaccination.

“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.

“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.”

Hospitals in Leeds will also start vaccinating high-priority members of the public from Tuesday, alongside Chesterfield Royal and Sherwood Forest hospitals in the East Midlands.

The 53 trusts were picked by NHS England as they had the facilities to store the jab, inside a special refrigerator, which is able to keep the vaccine at the required minus 70c temperature.

Most of the vaccine rollout will take place next year, alongside the Oxford/AstraZeneca version which is likely to considerably boost supply of the jab according to Business Secretary Alok Sharma.

Some of the 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are now in the UK and Mr Sharma said he is “confident” that all of them will be available when the vaccination programme starts.

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