Hospital staff in Gloucestershire could start being vaccinated from coronavirus ‘as early as next week’, the boss of the county’s two main hospitals said on Wednesday, writes Leigh Boobyer.

Deborah Lee said she is ‘confident’ that NHS staff within Gloucestershire’s hospitals will get the Covid vaccine ‘sometime this month, maybe as early as next week’.

Speaking in a webchat on Facebook yesterday, the local health chief said if the vaccine were delivered ‘this afternoon, we would be able to roll with it tomorrow’.

Britain’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, said the jab, which offers up to 95 per cent protection against the virus, is safe to be rolled out.

The first doses are already on their way to the UK, with 800,000 due before this weekend as part of the first 20million ordered.

Ms Lee said those jabs will be handed out to hospitals across the UK although she said she does not know whether Gloucestershire’s hospitals will receive it first, but added: “If it is not Gloucestershire next week then it will be the week after.”

Elderly people in care homes and care home staff have been placed top of the priority list, followed by over-80s and health and care staff.

Ms Lee, who is the chief executive of the NHS trust which runs Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General hospitals, said: “Gloucestershire hospitals is the lead organisation for Gloucestershire in terms of delivering the vaccine.

“We will be working really closely with particularly GPs, practice nurses and in and around what we call primary care.

“The vast majority of people who get the vaccine will get it through a series of delivery units, if I can call it that. They are everything from a building to a pod where someone will be able to come along and receive their vaccine.

“What we have heard this morning is a bit more about who the vaccine priority groups will be.

“The priorities will be those who are a resident in a care home or work in a care home, staff that work in the NHS and other parts of social care, and then coming down from those that are most vulnerable, those over 80, coming down through the age range.

“By late-spring everyone who wants to have the vaccine will have had the opportunity to do so.

“This is not going to happen overnight but I am confident that sometime this month, maybe as early as next week, we will be starting to deliver the vaccine to our own workforce.”

“The planning is advanced and complete. If the vaccine were to arrive this afternoon, we would be ready to roll with it tomorrow. What we do not yet know is who will be getting it.

“We are told there is 800,000 doses coming out of the first 20million from Friday.

“The first supply we expect over the weekend will be 800,000 doses and that will be distributed to a number of hospitals.

“I do not yet know if that is mine but we are ready to roll, so I really hope it might be.

“If it is not Gloucestershire next week then it will be the week after. ”