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Jennifer from St Albans told Professor Jonathan Van-Tam that her three children have been asking if Father Christmas will get the coronavirus vaccine. Professor Van-Tam stated that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has made special consideration for Santa. 

Speaking on the BBC, caller Jennifer said: “I have got three children here at home and they were asking this morning about Father Christmas and whether he would be at the front of the queue to get the vaccine?”

Professor Van-Tam replied: “Absolutely, the JVCI made a very special case for Father Christmas.

“He is going to be absolutely at the top of our list.”

England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer also told the BBC that Britain will receive the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine within hours.

He also addressed the potential storage temperature issue with the vaccine.

Professor Van-Tam said: “Now, there is a technical issue related to the Pfizer vaccine that we currently expect to receive very, very shortly in the UK, and I do mean hours, not days.”

He added: “If we can get to the point where the NHS is managing in a much more normal way than at present, then that gives politicians the option to think about what can be done next to make life more normal for us,” he said. 

“It’s not my job to give you a magic number here or a magic calendar date because so much depends on how quickly the vaccine programme is rolled out, whether the people called forwards for the vaccine accept it.

“If we can get to the point where we are confident that these vaccines not only take out the illness but take out the asymptomatic infections sufficiently to stop people spreading the virus when they don’t know they have got it, that becomes a big game-changer and a big win.

“If we can get to the science that shows this is happening, that shows we have got vaccines that are really punching above their weight and that makes it more likely we can bring restrictions down faster than in any other way.”

Professor Van-Tam also explained why the UK is the first country to approve the Pfizer vaccine.

He said: “We are the first to approve it because we’ve been really, really organised about this from the word go.

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“I started focusing behind the scenes on getting vaccines and vaccine preparedness back in March – actually quite a bit before the vaccine taskforce, which has been absolutely brilliant, was formed.”

He added: “This began with conversations with Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government chief scientific adviser, and from the word go we’ve been on the front foot, being clear that we needed vaccines as soon as was safely and assuredly possible.

“And the MHRA, our regulator, has just been superb in this space and taken unprecedented steps to see data early, and that’s why we are where we are.”

He also said the manufacturers have “moved at real pace”.

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