NHS staff in West Berkshire are on track to vaccinate the over 70s and extremely vulnerable individuals against Covid-19 within the next two weeks.

Berkshire West Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) began vaccinating people with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab on December 14. It then ramped up its vaccination programme after receiving thousands of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca at the beginning of January.

So far, it has administered the jabs to front-line health and social care workers, care home workers and residents and the over 80s.

It began vaccinating the over 75s in West Berkshire on Monday, February 1, at the vaccination centre at Newbury Racecourse and GP practices across the district.

READ MORE: People in West Berkshire facing council tax increase

The government wants the fourth priority group – the over 70s and people who are clinically extremely vulnerable – to be offered at least one dose of a vaccine by February 15.

Matthew Pearce, West Berkshire Council’s head of Public Health, said: “I understand that Berkshire West and West Berkshire is on target to achieve that.”

His comments came at a meeting of West Berkshire Council’s Local Outbreak Engagement Board on February 1.

NHS figures show that across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxforodshire 187,343 doses of the vaccine have been administered.

The latest government figures show more than 10 million people in the UK have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine so far and more than 498,000 have received a second.

With both vaccines, each person should receive two doses to develop immunity against the disease.

The government has secured 407 million doses of different coronavirus vaccines, produced by the likes of Pfizer (40 million), AstraZeneca (100 million), Valneva (100 million) and GlaxoSmithKline (60 million).

Speaking earlier this week, health secretary Matt Hancock said: “We’re confident we have the supplies to meet our target to offer the vaccine to the four most vulnerable groups by February 15.

READ MORE: Rapid Covid-19 tests offered to West Berkshire key workers

“We now have over 400 million doses of vaccine on order, including the additional 40 million vaccine doses from Valneva we ordered yesterday.”

He added: “I want to thank everyone involved in this collective national effort that saw nearly a million people get vaccinations last weekend alone – that’s one in 60 of the UK’s adults.

“We’ve now protected almost nine out of every 10 people over 80 and over half of people in their 70s.

“I’m also delighted we’ve visited every eligible care home – 10,307 in total.”