Coronavirus: Brighton Centre mass vaccination site opens

The seafront site in Kings Road is one of 32 which are to open across the country this week, NHS England said.

The new vaccination centres will be focusing on offering jabs to health and social care staff today, before opening their doors to other priority patients from tomorrow.

NHS England said hundreds of thousands of letters have already been sent out to people over the age of 80 in the areas covered by the new sites, inviting them to book a jab.

A vial of doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine

The news comes days after Brighton and Hove’s health chief announced there are several reasons to be positive amid the national lockdown.

The city’s director of public health, Alistair Hill, said a sharp decrease in the number of weekly coronavirus cases in the city and the rollout of vaccines as reasons to be optimistic.

"The rate of new cases of Covid-19 in Brighton and Hove is slowing down," he said.

"In the past seven days we saw a 36 per cent reduction compared to the previous week.”

In London and Greater London, there are sites at the Hornsey Central Neighbourhood Health Centre in Crouch End, one in an old Ikea unit at Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, another in the Francis Crick Institute in central London and one at the Hawks Road Health Clinic in Kingston.

In the South East, a vaccination centre has opened at Harlow Leisurezone in Essex, another at Oxford Kassam Stadium and one at Southampton Clinical Commissioning Group’s offices.

On the South Coast, a vaccination site has opened at the Brighton Centre and one at Debenhams, Folkestone.

The new centres will mean there is a network of 49 mass vaccination sites across England.

There are also 70 pharmacies offering the jab, as well as more than 1,000 GP surgeries and 250 hospitals

As of the end of the day on Friday, 5.9 million people had received their first dose of the vaccine across the UK.