Care home residents could get the coronavirus jab by Christmas as a hitch in the vaccine rollout plan is smoothed over, reports claim.
The medical regulator has confirmed the Covid-19 jab will be able to be delivered to nursing homes starting this week following concerns about the difficulty of distributing it.
The UK is tomorrow set to become the first country in the world to roll out a Covid-19 jab
However the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine presents logistical challenges as it must be stored at such low temperatures.
According to The Times, medicine regulators have found a way to get around the 'cold chain' challenge that had so far seen better-equipped hospitals take delivery of the first doses initially.
June Raine, head of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said her staff had worked out the issue by finding a way to split the shipments into smaller batches.
That meant the doses will be able to go into the UK's care homes from Tuesday, according to the Times.
“Our goal is to ensure the vaccine reaches people in care homes as safely as possible,” she told Andrew Marr on BBC One.
The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in hospitals in England over the weekend.
Hundreds of thousands of doses arrived in the UK on Friday on refrigerated trucks from Belgium.
From there they were taken to specialist refrigerated storage facilities, at undisclosed locations.
They were then shipped to the 50 hospital 'hubs' taking part in the first phase of the mass vaccination programme.
The shots must be stored minus 70C before being thawed out and can only be moved four times within the 'cold chain' before the doses must be used.
The vaccine boxes containing 975 doses had to be split so that they can be brought to care homes.
Dr Raine told Marr earlier: “We have approved how the vaccine can be put into the small packs, but obviously what we’re doing is giving advice and guidance on how well that, carefully, that is done.
People aged 80 and over, care home workers and NHS workers who are at higher risk will be the first in queue to receive the jab.
Frontline health and care workers, the elderly and severely clinically vulnerable will be prioritised for the vaccine as the rollout gets underway.
