LWHEN the first vaccinations against Covid-19 were given in Ludlow at Hagley Place it provided the first light at the end of the tunnel.

Vaccines will be given in levels of priority starting with care home residents and staff.

Also near the top of the list will be health and social care workers.

People over the age of 80 are also high priority and then will come people in younger age categories.

Age is considered so important because the older people get the more likely they are to become seriously ill or die if they get the virus.

Then there will be people who are more at risk because they have some pre-existing health conditions.

Of the more than 70,000 deaths in the United Kingdom in the past year of people with a Covid diagnosis, the vast majority have been those over the age of 80 or who have health issues that make them especially vulnerable.

The final group to be vaccinated will be people who do not come into any of these categories.

Initial vaccinations and those given to care home residents and staff in Ludlow use the vaccine developed jointly by Pfizler and Biontech.

This was the first vaccine to be licensed for use in the UK.

However, the major vaccination programme is expected to make use of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

This vaccine is core to the Government’s immunisation programme and most of the doses will be manufactured in the UK.

With 100 million doses ordered there should be enough for everyone to have the vaccination although the timescale in which everyone will get done has not been released.

Experts say that they have no reason to believe that the vaccine will not be affected against the new mutant versions of Covid that have been emerging.

One of the big advantages of the ‘Oxford vaccine’ over the Pflizler Biontech version is that it is much easier to store and can be kept in a fridge rather than having to be deep frozen to minus 70C.