NI health trusts aim to set up two mass sites each to give Pfizer vaccine to health workers before Christmas

Each of the five trusts have now agreed a plan, in principle, to roll-out the German-developed Pfizer-Biontech vaccine to around 75% of the 100,000 health staff in Northern Ireland before Christmas.

Teams of people are now being set up to administer the vaccine, which will require large numbers of qualified staff.

The Pfizer-Biontech vaccine must be stored and transported at temperatures well below freezing and, as such, mass centres for administering the jabs are believed to be the most feasible approach rather than a more localised approach that could pose transportation difficulties.

The Department of Health is expected to set out the plans to set up as many as 10 mass sites across the five health trusts with trade union representatives tomorrow.

Anne Speed, lead negotiator for the largest trade union in the Northern Ireland health service, Unison, told the News Letter: “We would like to have as much reassurance about the clinical and medical data for this vaccine that they can share with us, and the level of confidence that it is going to be effective.

“There are a lot of questions that still need to be asked. There have to be operational arrangements to support the workforce.

“The bottom line is about building confidence and the more information there is the better.

“It has to be voluntary, it’s not mandatory, but we would hope there will be strong take-up.

“The workforce and the population has to be confident that this is a good thing to do, and they have to feel safe about taking it.”

She added: “People are very hopeful. It’s the fastest period of time that a vaccine has been created so we have to hope and expect that the scientists, the medical people, will get it right. We have to listen to their advice.

“And we have to be hopeful that it will be effective.

“Our job as trade unionists is to make sure as much information as possible is shared. We have to have as much knowledge as we can and we have to make sure that the conditions in which the workers will receive the vaccine and be looked after are the best that can be provided.”

Last week, Health Minister Robin Swann said he is “optimistic that vaccination will increasingly do the heavy lifting for us in 2021 in the battle against coronavirus” but stressed that it still had to be granted regulatory approval.