The UK is gearing up for the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine this week

The UK is gearing up to become the first country to roll out the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine this week, with the shot initially made available in hospitals before distributing supplies to doctor’s clinics.

The first doses will be administered on Tuesday, UK time, with the National Health Service (NHS) giving top priority to the vaccination of people over 80, primary health workers, staff and nursing home residents.

The UK last week approved the use of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, putting it ahead in the global race to start the mass vaccination program.

In total, the UK has ordered 40 million doses – enough to vaccinate 20 million people in the country of 67 million.

Approximately 800,000 doses are expected to be available in the first week.

The first doses arriving from Belgium will be stored in secure locations across the country, where they will be quality controlled, according to the UK Department of Health.

The vaccine must be thawed before use

The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine has tough storage requirements.

It should be stored at -70 degrees Celsius and will only last five days in a regular refrigerator.

For that reason, the Ministry of Health said the vaccine would first be administered in 50 hospitals.

It said it would take a few hours to thaw and prepare each vaccine for use.

NHS England has written to GPs telling them to prepare to give vaccinations from December 14th.

Rather than running clinics in individual surgeries, groups of local doctors will operate more than 1,000 vaccination centers across the country, the government said.

Boxes of the vaccine contain five packs of 975 doses, but special regulatory approval is needed to split them.

A senior medical officer said, while he hoped it would be possible to split the packages and deliver them directly to care homes, this was not guaranteed.