Boots to give coronavirus vaccines to vulnerable at first site this week

Boots will begin giving coronavirus jabs to the most vulnerable people this week from a newly-opened vaccine site.

The high street pharmacy will offer Oxford/AstraZeneca inoculations in Halifax, West Yorkshire, while further sites will open in Huddersfield and Gloucester in the coming weeks.

Shop staff have plenty of experience administering flu vaccines, having already given out over a million this winter alone.

It comes as thousands more people are expected to be given a Covid-19 jab in days as seven mass vaccination sites open across England.

The new centres - including at a football stadium and a tennis club - will be joined later this week by hundreds more GP-led and hospital services along with the first pharmacy-led pilot sites, taking the total to around 1,200, NHS England said.

Seb James, Boots managing director, said: "Our vaccination sites are clean, clinical environments, inaccessible, convenient locations, like high streets, and we have extensive experience in vaccination services, having carried out over a million flu vaccinations in this winter flu season alone.

"We hope to help the NHS and enable more people to get the vaccination quickly."

Of the almost 1,000 vaccination sites currently open across the country, the NHS said almost 800 are GP-led services which are expected to deliver most of the jabs.

The Government is aiming to vaccinate almost 14 million vulnerable people - including the over-80s, care home residents and health and care staff - by the middle of February.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said they are on course to meet the target, with over 200,000 people being vaccinated every day in England and a third of over-80s already jabbed.

Around two million in the UK now have now received their first dose of the vaccine.

The seven new England vaccine centres opening on Monday are: 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.

Mr Hancock is due to visit one of the centres before setting out the Government's vaccines delivery plan at a Downing Street press conference on Monday afternoon.Follow the Official Rokna NEWS Telegram Channel For More and fresh NEWS.

Mirror