A PARAMEDIC has become the first person at an ambulance service to receive the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine today.

Paramedic and team leader at South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb) Nicola Sykes received the jab today from the service's director of nursing, Bethan Eaton-Haskins.

The ambulance service has already vaccinated 1,800 of its staff with the Pfizer jab, but today marks the beginning of the Oxford AstraZeneca roll-out for Secamb staff.

Operations manager Tom Pullen said he was proud to be part of the team administering the jab to key workers.

He tweeted yesterday: "Proud to be joining our Secamb team of Covid-19 vaccinators, as we start to vaccinate our staff from our mobile (HQ car park) centre tomorrow.

"We've already provided over 1,700 of our team with the Pfizer vaccine.

"Bring on AstraZeneca."

According to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), teachers are being considered as a possible priority for the next phase of the coronavirus vaccine roll-out.

JCVI member Professor Adam Finn said committee members had been instructed to come up with a plan by the middle of February to determine the priority order of who should be vaccinated next.

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He told Sky News: "As you can appreciate, these considerations start to be social values in a way more than the criteria we normally use, which is pressure on the health service.

"When it comes to teachers I think we all appreciate the critical role that they all play and so that really will figure in the discussions.” 

The priority list for the vaccine places older care home residents and staff at the top, followed by everyone over 80 years of age and frontline health and social care workers.

The government is aiming to offer inoculations to almost 14 million vulnerable people in the UK by mid-February.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said today the government is "on course" to reach its target, running at more than 200,000 people being vaccinated in England every day, and having already vaccinated around one third of the over-80s in the country.