EARLY preparations are being made to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine across Cheshire.

The first week of lockdown brought the arrival of something of an oddity for 2020 in good news as Pfizer announced that a preliminary trial of its vaccine recorded a 90 per cent effectiveness rate in a cohort of 43,500 people.

As with the rest of the UK, many factors are yet to be decided on how the roll-out of the vaccine will go. Cheshire West's Covid-19 outbreak board devoting a significant proportion of their time talking about the logistics of delivering the jab and CWAC Chief Executive Andrew Lewis said: "We are working with GPs to make sure they have the logistics support to deliver it to vulnerable populations.

"We are being cautiously optimistic. It has not yet got through the entire suite of tests. We do know that the delivery of this vaccine is quite challenging.

"It needs to be kept at very cold temperatures. A lot of this will be about the support of local GPs."

Dr Lesley Appleton, representing GPs at the meeting, warned that many surgeries did not have the facilities to store the vaccine at the required freezing temperatures.

But she had a belief that the way in which practices had supplied the flu vaccine this autumn put them in good stead.

Dr Appleton said: "I think we would like to make plans to know exactly what we would need to do, but we are aware that this is coming and we will be ready.

"Things seem to run very smoothly with our flu vaccinations. Hopefully [we] will be in a similar position with administering the Covid-19 vaccine."

Cheshire East do not hold their outbreak management meetings in public, so it is unclear if it has discussed the vaccine.

But with infection rates rising across the county in the last week there is cautious optimism about the development.

Currently, Cheshire East is recording a seven-day infection rate of 219.2 cases per 100,000 residents, lower than neighbouring Cheshire West and Chester which has a rate of 274.6 per 100,000.

In the north west region 3,023 people are in hospital with Covid-19, with 267 on ventilators.

For context, the pre-lockdown threshold for tier 3 restrictions was 300 cases per 100,000.

The rising figures were addressed by Cheshire East leader Cllr Sam Corcoran, who noted that after remaining flat for a few weeks, the rate of infection is now going up again.

He has called for further test and trace improvements.

Meanwhile, council leaders are still waiting for official Christmas guidance, with the suggestion being the country will go back into the tier system we saw pre-lockdown to keep rates low over the festive period.

Regardless of the government's next move, there is hope on the horizon, but a hard reality to face in the present.

It can be tempting to think that once GPs get their hands on vaccines, life will be as it was in January 2020 — but current case numbers and infection rates will require residents to follow the coronavirus regulations and advice for some weeks yet.