LARGE-scale vaccination centres are to be established “imminently," Nadhim Zahawi, the UK Government’s Vaccines Minister, has said, as he pointed to a rapid ramping up of the immunisation programme in the coming days.

Referring to a “Herculean effort,” he made clear there would be a “massive acceleration” in the numbers of coronavirus jabs being delivered from next week when daily figures will be published.

“It is an ambitious plan. The Prime Minister is right to set an ambitious target. The NHS has a very clear plan and I am confident that we can meet it,” he told the BBC. He expressed confidence that the target of immunising 13.9 million people by mid-February was doable.

He noted: “You will see from Monday a significant increase from the 1.3m that we have done from December 8.”

Boris Johnson will give a statement to a recalled House of Commons this morning as he sets out the thinking about the Government’s strategy. A debate will follow with a vote due at 7 pm. While there might be some Conservative rebels, their number is expected to be much lower than the 55 who voted against the tiers system last month. One former rebel, noting the alarming infection and death numbers, said: “We’re in a different place to last month.” The Government measures, which came into force legally this morning, will be passed overwhelmingly by MPs.

During a media round, Mr Zahawi pointed to how 99 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths could be reduced by vaccinating people in the nine categories of the most vulnerable people listed by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation.

“The average age of a person dying from Covid is about 83 in hospital…[but] there are still people between the ages of 50 and 65 who are needing hospitalisation for two or three days for additional oxygen support before they can overcome this terrible virus.

“Ninety-nine per cent of mortality is reduced by protecting those nine categories, the most vulnerable.”

Setting out the different routes of vaccination, the UK minister told Sky News: “What we did was stand up the hospital first, because when you have a novel vaccine, you want to make sure that as you increase the numbers of people being vaccinated you do it in a careful way where we can observe people.

“The regulator has a, what is called a ‘yellow card system,’ so that we see how people are reacting to the vaccine, in a very safe way.

“And then we go to GPs; GPs are the most effective way of getting into, say, for example, care homes. Then into national vaccination centres, which you will see imminently. And then into the community pharmacies in the independent sector.

“So, every sector will play a part in this,” he insisted.

His remarks came after the Government was accused of ignoring an “army” of small pharmacies in the delivery of the coronavirus vaccine.

Sandra Gidley, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, explained that there were thousands of high street pharmacies, which were “ready, willing and able” to assist in the rollout of the programme.

Ms Gidley said that under the Government plans some larger pharmacies were involved but they had to be able to guarantee they could deliver at least 950 doses per day.

“There are over 11,000 pharmacies. If each of those does 20-a-day, that is 1.3m-a-week extra vaccines that can be provided, very often to those who are hardest to reach. Why would any government not want to do that?” she asked.

Simon Dukes, head of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee, argued using pharmacies would be far more effective than recruiting retired medics as the Government was trying to do.

“Rather than scrabbling around trying to find retired GPs and nurses and anyone who has possibly dated skills, you’ve got an army of thousands of pharmacists up and down the country who administer the flu jab every winter,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“We’ve been telling the NHS that we’re ready, willing and desperate to help. But we’ve been met by a de facto silence,” he added.

Mr Zahawi said that as the number of Covid-19 cases came down, a decision could be made on easing lockdown restrictions.

“There will come a moment when the intersection between both hospitalisation and mortality and the vaccination programme…will begin to tilt in our favour and actually reduce the death rates, reduce the hospitalisation rates and ultimately get to a place that we can make that political decision of how we manage the virus beyond the nine categories that are the most vulnerable.”