The first hospital COVID-19 vaccinations could be under way tomorrow while practices could begin programmes next week, according to government sources.

NHS England said a small number of primary care networks will begin community vaccination next week. Hospitals will focus on elderly hospital patients and care home staff while practices will be expected to focus on patients over the age of 80. Further centres are being established in conference centres and sports halls – but will not be used for the first batch of 800,000 mRNA vaccines, NHS England said.

NHS national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said: “Despite the huge complexities, hospitals will kickstart the first phase of the largest scale vaccination campaign in our country’s history from Tuesday. The first tranche of vaccine deliveries will be landing at hospitals by Monday in readiness. The NHS has a strong record of delivering large scale vaccination programmes – from the flu jab, HPV vaccine and lifesaving MMR jabs – hardworking staff will once again rise to the challenge to protect the most vulnerable people from this awful disease.”

The Royal College of GPs said the involvement of GPs was “much earlier than originally anticipated.” A statement added: “The College is truly grateful for everything GPs and their teams are doing to help the COVID effort. Their contribution throughout the pandemic has been magnificent.”

A letter to practices from Dr Nikki Kanani, NHS England medical director for primary care, said the first primary care network sites will deliver 975 doses each next week and these should be aimed at patients over the age of 80. She says that vaccine stocks must be used within three and a half days of delivery. In the letter, she said work was still under way to identify next week’s primary care sites.

British Medical Association chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: “We need the government to be crystal clear about how this prioritisation will work; we have already seen mixed messaging about when care homes, high-risk patients in the community and NHS staff can expect to be vaccinated, and many will disappointed that they will have to wait for several weeks longer than originally indicted by the Government.In the first phase of the pandemic, significant numbers of healthcare workers became seriously ill and many lost their lives to the virus – and we need to prevent any more unnecessary deaths or enforced absences from work.”

The UK yesterday reported 17,272 cases of new infection and 231 deaths. It was the largest number of infections for ten days, although numbers a are usually low on Sundays. Hospitals in England reported 1,248 admissions on Friday, from the virus, compared with 1,055 the previous Friday.