RESIDENTS and car workers at a care home in village near Oxford have joined the largest ever vaccination programme in NHS history – and been given their Covid-19 jabs.

Clinical lead nurse at Chawley Grove Care Home in Cumnor Hill, Emma Fielder, said it was a ‘wonderful’ moment to welcome the vaccination team into the home and felt it was a 'hugely positive' step following a challenging year.

She added: "I feel like we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we started to see the vaccinations being given to residents.

"It was actually quite emotional seeing many of our residents receive the vaccine, this is the very first step to ensuring they can soon hug their loved ones again and lead the life they wish to. It’s been incredible.

"It is the start of better times and hopefully people can begin to get their lives back to some kind of normality.

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"And for staff there is a sense of comfort as the vaccine will hopefully protect us as well as the people we care for, enabling us to work even more effectively caring for some of society’s most vulnerable people."

NHS England has told GPs that it 'expects' care home residents and staff at homes across England to be vaccinated by January 24 'at the latest'.

Care home residents top the list which sets out nine categories of those most at risk.

The next category include over 80s and all frontline health and care workers.

More than two million people in the UK have now been vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca jabs since the vaccination programme began in December and the early new year after regulators approved them for use.

A third one – the Moderna vaccine – has also just been approved and is expected to be rolled out later this spring.

The Government has also promised to establish more than 2,700 vaccine sites across the UK in a giant effort to vaccinate the country.