IT was the news many were hoping and praying for.

A coronavirus vaccine found to be 90 per cent effective could be rolled out to the highest-priority Britons by Christmas.

The news was confirmed by the Government's deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he lauded the vaccine developed by American drug giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech as "a very important scientific breakthrough".

He said he is "hopeful we could see some vaccine by Christmas" but urged people to not "get too over excited about where we are".

But what do you think?

Would you jump at the chance to have the vaccine or are you sceptical?

Vote in our poll here:

Who is first in line for vaccination?

The joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) advise government on vaccination policy.

Its interim recommendations are to prioritise older adults in care homes and care workers, followed by all those aged 80 and over, and health and social care workers. Next in line are the over-75s, then the over-70s, and so on down the age groups, as more vaccine shots become available.

Can people take more than one Covid vaccine?

The interim results from Pfizer this week suggest that its two-shot vaccine, developed with the German firm BioNTech, is 90 per cent effective.

The figure is based on 94 Covid cases across both vaccinated and placebo arms of the trial. More data is needed to confirm this level of protection and that is expected within weeks when Pfizer runs another analysis based on 164 infected trial volunteers.

If the vaccine is proven to achieve such a high level of protection, there is no reason why someone would need a different, additional vaccine on top.

When will the rest of the population get a vaccine?

The first task is to immunise as soon as possible all those in the 10 groups identified by the JCVI. Together they comprise an estimated 22 million people.

Besides care home residents, they include all health and care staff, the 2.2 million people on the shielding list classed as “extremely clinically vulnerable”, and then everyone aged 50 and over.

This is “phase one” of the rollout.

If the vaccine is delayed until early 2021, it will be even later before the general public get the jab. Each of these 22 million people will need two doses, and because the NHS hopes to immunise 1 million people a week, everyone else is unlikely to be able to get a jab until the middle of next year at the earliest.

This is “phase two” of the rollout. How long it will be before the general public can get immunised also depends on whether the JCVI, the government and NHS decide to vaccinate under-18s. That is being discussed but no decision has yet been taken.

Further discussions are afoot on how else people may be prioritised, and there could be different priority groups for different vaccines. This is similar to what is seen with influenza vaccines, where older and more vulnerable adults get a killed virus vaccine while younger people get a live, weakened virus vaccine.