Mass vaccination centres to open up across UK

Thousands of people in England aged 80 and older have received invitations to get their coronavirus vaccine, officials said Sunday, as Britain ramps up its national vaccination program in a bid to meet its target of inoculating around 15 million people by the middle of February.

More than 600,000 invitations are due to arrive at doorsteps across England this week, asking people to sign up for jabs at new mass vaccination centers which have been set up across the country.

The government says so far more than 1.2 million people have been given a first dose of the vaccine.

The seven new large-scale vaccination centers join around 1,000 other sites across the country, at hospitals, general practitioners’ clinics and some pharmacies.

In a mass vaccination center in Stevenage, in the southern county of Hertfordshire, health workers were receiving jabs on Saturday, following an announcement by the government that NHS staff would be prioritized in the vaccine rollout.

Officials are hoping a speedy mass vaccination rollout will help get Britain out of its third national lockdown, which was brought in this month to curb a surge in infections and deaths.

Britain has recorded 81,000 deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.