Every adult will be offered a Covid-19 vaccination by autumn - as 200,000 receive jab per day
Every adult in the UK will have been offered a Covid-19 vaccination by autumn this year, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said.
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Hide AdThe assurance comes as seven new mass vaccination centres opened across England on Monday (11 Jan), in an effort to boost the speed of the rollout.
200,000 vaccinated per day
The UK government is aiming to vaccinate around 13 million vulnerable people by the middle of February.
Mr Hancock said they are on course to meet the target of two million vaccinations per week, with more than 200,000 people currently being vaccinated every day in England.
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Hide AdA third of people aged over 80 have already received their jab and it is expected that all adults will be offered an injection by the autumn.
He said: "Absolutely we're going to offer the vaccine to everybody by autumn.
"We've got over 350 million doses on order. They're not all here yet, and we're rolling them out as fast as they get delivered."
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Hide AdMass rollout underway
Thousands more people are expected to be given a vaccine soon, as seven mass vaccination centres have been opened across England.
The new centres include Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, the Excel Centre where London’s Nightingale hospital is based, Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, Robertson House in Stevenage and Birmingham’s Millennium Point.
These sites will offer jabs to people aged 80 and above, along with health and care staff, and will be joined later this week by hundreds more GP-led and hospital services, along with the first pharmacy-led pilot sites.
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Hide AdThis will take the total vaccination hubs to around 1,200, NHS England said.
In Scotland, the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is now available in more than 1,000 locations.
Mr Hancock, who is due to visit one of the new sites, will set out the vaccines delivery plan at a Downing Street press conference.
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Hide AdHe said: “From today [11 Jan], the full scale of our plans will be published, so the public can be assured of the time, effort and resources that have gone and will go into ensuring we protect the British people from the scourge of this virus.”
Around two million people across the UK have now received their first dose of a vaccine.