COVID-19: First pictures of coronavirus vaccine arriving at a UK hospital ahead of national rollout
Batches of the coronavirus vaccine have been pictured arriving at a hospital in south London ahead of the UK-wide rollout of the treatment this week.
Staff have been unloading doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab from boxes at Croydon University Hospital before placing them in freezers on the site.
The COVID-19 vaccine must be stored at temperatures of -70C to -80C.
Louise Coughlan, joint chief pharmacist at Croydon Health Services, said: “This is just so exciting, it’s a momentous occasion.
“The NHS has been planning ostensibly to deliver the largest vaccination programme in our history – so it’s really exciting.”
Vaccinations will be administered at dozens of hospital hubs from Tuesday but people over 80 have been told not to worry if they are not called up to receive the vaccine this month.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said people need to “hang fire” and be assured they have not been forgotten if they have not received a letter or a phone call about the jab.
Mr Hopson told the PA news agency: “I don’t think people should expect anything over the next few days because the reality is, as I said, that for the vast, vast, vast majority of people this will be done in January, February, March.
“And the one thing that we don’t want people to get anxious about or concerned about is ‘Where’s my letter?’ in December.”
He added: “People really shouldn’t worry if they’re over 80 and they haven’t had a letter.
“I’m sure there will be communications over the next few weeks that will tell people how quickly we are getting through the over-80s, and there will be plenty of communications to say, at the right point, if you haven’t had a letter then you should talk to your GP, but we are many weeks away from that.”
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, enough to vaccinate 20 million people, as people need to receive two doses.
There are 800,000 doses in the first tranche, meaning 400,000 people will be vaccinated initially.
There are 50 hubs in the first wave of the vaccination programme in England, with more hospitals starting to vaccinate over the coming weeks and months as the programme ramps up.
Those receiving a jab will be given an handwritten immunisation card which will have the vaccine name, date of immunisation and batch number of each of the doses given.
The cards will act as a reminder for a second dose and for the type of vaccine, and it will also give information about how to report side effects.
The NHS’s medical director in England has said the start of the vaccination programme this week “feels like the beginning of the end”.
Professor Stephen Powis said: “As a doctor, this is a really exciting moment.”
But he warned that what he describes as the “largest-scale vaccination campaign in our country’s history” will be a “marathon, not a sprint”.
He said: “It will take many months for us to vaccinate everybody who needs vaccination.”
Prof Powis also admitted there were “huge complexities” but said the NHS had a “strong record of delivering large-scale vaccination programmes”.
He continued: “Hardworking staff will once again rise to the challenge to protect the most vulnerable people from this awful disease.”
Sky news