Coronavirus: NHS boss confirms health service is preparing for vaccine by Christmas
The NHS is preparing to distribute potential Covid-19 vaccines in time for Christmas, the head of the health service announced today.
Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, said medical chiefs were drawing up plans for wide-scale rollout of a potential vaccine over the next two months, in case one of them is ready in time for Christmas.
“There are over two hundred vaccines in development… we should hopefully get one or more of those available, certainly from the first part of next year,” said Stevens.
“But in anticipation of that, we’re also gearing the NHS up to be ready to make a start on administering Covid vaccines before Christmas if they become available.”
GPs are being put on standby to start vaccinating over-85s and frontline health workers from the beginning of next month, specialist magazine Pulse reported last night.
A new Direct Enhanced Service (DES) is set to be announced as soon as next week for practices and primary care networks to start administering the vaccines.
The new DES scheme would enhance GPs’ powers to provide a wider range of services to patients that are not provided under usual contracts.
A coronavirus vaccine has not yet been approved by the NHS, and will need to undergo several checks by regulators before it can be offered to the public.
A drug being developed by Astrazeneca and the University of Oxford is currently the frontrunner in the global race for a vaccine.
In July, scientists from the university published the results of initial trials of the vaccine, which showed that it induced strong immune reactions in participants with no negative side effects.
Astrazeneca has so far agreed to mass produce 400m doses of the vaccine for countries around the globe, 100m of which have been ordered by the UK government.
Ministers have also signed agreements for 30m doses of an experimental vaccine that is being joint produced by American firms Pfizer and Biontech.
If successful, the firms had planned to apply for regulatory approval for the potential vaccine by October, which could see it hit the market by the end of the year.
In September health secretary Matt Hancock said a vaccine would “most likely” be available in the first few months of 2021.