VACCINE ROLL-OUT PLAN PUBLISHED

Welsh Government has published its plan to vaccinate the 2.5m adults in #wales The key milestones are:

By mid-February vaccination offered to approx 700,000 in 4 groups:

o All care home residents and staff

o Frontline health and social care staff

o Everyone over 70

o And everyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable.

By Spring, subject to supply, vaccination offered to everyone in the phase one priority groups – that’s everyone over 50 and all those who are at risk because they have an underlying health condition.

By the autumn, the focus will be on offering Covid vaccines to everyone else, in line with the latest advice from the JCVI.

Welsh Government is also putting some early markers down for specific groups:

o By 18 January, all frontline Welsh Ambulance Service staff will have been offered vaccination.

o All people living and working in care homes will have been offered vaccination by the end of this month.

o And the number of GP practices providing vaccines closer to people’s homes will have risen to 250 by the end of January as supplies of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine increases.

#Wales now has more than 250,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which are expected to be used by mid-February, with more coming at the end of the month.

The Pfizer vaccine is mainly being given in the mass vaccination centres to frontline health and care staff together with care home residents and staff and the over-80s, until the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine becomes available in larger volumes. Wales now has 22 mass vaccination centres and that will increase to 35 in the next couple of weeks.

More than 100 GP practices across Wales will be running clinics by the end of this week and we also have 14 mobile units taking the vaccine to care homes. This will increase to 250 GP practices by the end of the month.