Trials of 24/7 coronavirus vaccines to start in some hospitals within 10 days
The chief executive of NHS England has said that 24/7 coronavirus vaccines will be trialled in some hospitals within 10 days.
Sir Simon Stevens said: ‘We will start testing 24/7 in some hospitals over the course of the next 10 days, but we are at the moment vaccinating at the rate of about 140 jabs per minute.’
So far, more than 3.5 million people in the UK have now received their first dose of a vaccine.
Sir Simon told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show this morning: ‘Yesterday a quarter of a million people got their vaccinations on the NHS and I’m pretty confident that by the time we get to the end of today, Sunday night, we will have perhaps done a million and a half vaccinations this past week.
‘That’s up from about around a million the week before and a third of a million the week before that.
‘This is a huge team effort bringing together the NHS, St John’s Ambulance, volunteers, the Royal Voluntary Society.
‘We are vaccinating not just in health centres and hospitals but in village halls and rugby clubs and cathedrals and shopping centres and race courses.
‘Everybody is coming together to get this done and I think we’re off to a very strong start.’
His comments come after the prime minister was pressed on the need to get the vaccines rolled out faster.
Last Wednesday, he told the House of Commons that ‘at the moment the limit is on supply’ of the vaccine, rather than how quickly it can be injected.
Nevertheless, he told MPs during Prime Minister’s Questions: ‘We will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can.’
Sir Simon also gave a stark warning this morning, saying: ‘Since Christmas Day we’ve seen another 15,000 increase in the in-patients in hospitals across England, that’s the equivalent of filling 30 hospitals full of coronavirus patients.
‘Staggeringly, every thirty seconds across England another patient is being admitted to hospital with coronavirus.’
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said today that every adult in the UK should be offered a first dose of the vaccine by early autumn.
He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: ‘Our target is by September to have offered all the adult population a first dose. If we can do it faster than that, great, but that’s the roadmap.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.