England’s main street pharmacies will start rolling out Covid vaccines as the death toll from viruses in the UK rises above 100,000.
Boots and Superdrug branches will be one of the six stores in England that can administer the jabs from Thursday, while the government wants to achieve its goal of vaccinating all people in the four most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month.
Andrews Pharmacy in Macclesfield, Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, North London, Woodside Pharmacy in Telford and Appleton Village Pharmacy in Widnes will be in the first group to hand out the injections, along with Boots in Halifax, and Superdrug in Guildford.
Boris Johnson also told MPs that the distribution will take place 24/7 as soon as we can, but said that the supply of doses remains the main obstacle.
The Scottish Government on Wednesday night published its delivery plan, detailing how many doses it will receive by the end of May for each week, which wants to make a split with London, which does not want to publish its numbers.
The six pharmacies were chosen because they can deliver large amounts of the vaccine and enable social removal, and Matt Hancock, health secretary, said it was ‘fantastic’ that jabs were available in the main street.
“Pharmacies are the center of local communities and will make a huge difference to our deployment program by providing even more local, convenient locations for those who are eligible to get a ride,” he said.
According to NHS England, by the end of the month, more than 200 chemists in the community will be able to vaccinate.
The pharmacies join the 200 hospitals, about 800 GP clinics and seven mass vaccination centers where jabs are already being distributed.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer urged ministers to go further and use England’s 11,500 pharmacies to deliver vaccinations continuously by next month.
The extensive vaccination service in England comes when the daily reported death rate in the UK reached a new high on Wednesday, with 1564 deaths within 28 days after a positive test.
The latest figures, according to official data, have reached the cruel milestone of more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the UK.