Good evening, and welcome back to Downing Street for today's coronavirus briefing.
Today I'm joined by Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, and Professor Steve Powis, Medical Director of NHS England.
The start of our COVID-19 vaccination programme on Tuesday was the latest in a long line of firsts for the NHS. The NHS was the first health care system in the world to roll out the vaccines for other deadly diseases like TB, measles, mumps and rubella, and meningitis C.
So I'm so proud we can now add COVID-19 to that list.
Before updating you on vaccine deployment, I'd like to go through the latest coronavirus data.
The average number of new cases each day is now 16,236 - that has risen over the last week.
Today, there are 15,242 COVID patients in hospital across the UK - which is slightly less than last week. And sadly, 516 deaths were reported yesterday.
Vaccine deployment
The fall in the number of cases has flattened off - and is rising in some parts of the country like Kent, Essex and some parts of London.
It shows us this fight is far from over and how we must all play our part and stay on our guard, now and through Christmas.
We've got help on the horizon and we can all see that with the vaccine - so don't blow it now. And of course, this shows why the deployment of a vaccine is so important.
I just want to take a moment to thank everyone involved in the vaccine rollout so far, which has been done with such professionalism and skill.
And today I want to pay a special tribute and thank pharmacists, who are working with such a tricky vaccine. Must be kept cold at -70 degrees. They have done so much work to get ready for this moment at such pace.
As of today, we are vaccinating in 73 hospitals across the UK. Tens of thousands of people have had the jab.
I want to set out the next steps.
I can confirm that we will shortly expand our vaccination programme further to 10 more locations in England and from next week we will begin vaccinations in GP-led sites and vaccinate in care homes by Christmas.
We will keep on expanding this roll out to reach more and more people.
As more vaccines come on stream, we will open vaccination centres in larger venues, like sports stadia and conference halls next year and that's when most people can expect to get their jabs.
When the time comes, the NHS will
