Coronavirus: Portsmouth Hospital University Trust chosen as hub for next week's Covid-19 vaccine roll out

Portsmouth Hospital University Trust is one of 53 NHS trusts that will be a hub for delivering the Pfizer vaccine, which was approved for use in the UK yesterday.

Health secretary Matt Hancock has said 800,000 doses of the jab will arrive next week and Public Health England will process orders for next-day delivery to the hubs.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises ministers, has recommended care home residents and staff should be the top priority.

But issues surrounding storage temperature and how many times it can be transported have prompted prime minister Boris Johnson to warn of ‘immense logistical challenges’ in the Pfizer rollout, with experts warning that people in care homes might face delays.

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, said the vaccine priority list was designed to be flexible and he understood the news about care home delays would be disappointing but asked for ‘a very small degree of patience’ in delivering a new vaccine.

SEE ALSO: Portsmouth matron shares mental health journey after her whole family gets Covid-19

Speaking to the Today programme, he said: ‘We have got an exciting vaccine, we have got others that are in the pipeline and we fully expect the programme and our priority list to be rolled out in the very near future, so I think the very short-term practical difficulties of getting this out from a storage point of view should not let us all lose sight of the fact that these care home residents and their staff are our utmost priority – and it may well be possible to get the care home staff to be immunised within a local hospital setting.

‘We have advised in our statement that there is flexibility at an approach to this list according to what was actually feasible and logistical on the ground, so this is not wholly unexpected, but the clear list that we have drawn out is a list of priority in terms of vulnerability.’

The country has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer jab, enough to vaccinate 20 million people with two doses.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

You can subscribe here for unlimited access to Portsmouth news online - as well as fewer adverts, access to our digital edition and mobile app.

For Black Friday we’ve slashed the cost of a new subscription by 30 per cent - so you can get unlimited access to our coverage for as little as £1.40 a month.