AN online calculator has launched to tell people when they are likely to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

With government restrictions tightened since the PM's Saturday announcement with London, the south-east and east of England plunged into the new tier four and Christmas bubbles cut from a five-day period to just one, the roll out of the Pfizer/BioNTechcoronavirusvaccination cannot come soon enough.

Health minister Lord Bethell has said more than 137,000 people in the UK received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in the first week of the "largest vaccination programme in British history".

The government has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine – enough to immunise 20 million people with two shots each. There are 800,000 doses in the first tranche, meaning 400,000 people will be vaccinated initially.

In Cheshire the vaccine was rolled out into primary care settings last week with local vaccination services going live in Winsford, Frodsham and Macclesfield.

Crewe and other locations across the county are set to go live in the coming weeks.

The distribution of the vaccine faces challenges as it needs to be kept under extreme cold temperatures around –70C

For those keen to know where they stand in the queue to receive the jab, Omni Calculator - a company that specialises in custom-built calculators - has launched a Vaccine Queue Calculator for the UK.

Users of the calculator are asked to enter their age and notify the system of certain factors such as if they are a health worker or if they have any underlying health conditions.

The calculator will then give the user a notional number as to where they stand in terms of vaccine priority as well as an estimate of the dates between which they are likely to receive their jab.

It must be stressed that the calculator is dependent and not connected to the NHS or the vaccine rollout programme.

Doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab are being administered from dozens of hospital hubs. In Cheshire the Countess of Chester Hospital is a hub.

People aged 80 and over, care home workers and NHS workers who are at higher risk are first in line to receive it.

The calculator can be found here.