More than one million people aged 80 or over have now been invited to book a coronavirus jab at a Vaccination Centre.

Ten new large-scale centres, including a rugby ground, racecourse, food court and a cathedral, have now opened, joining the seven already delivering the life-saving jab. There are now also 1,000 GP-led services and more than 250 hospitals offering coronavirus vaccinations, with dozens of new high street pharmacies stores also jabbing people by the end of this week.

People aged 80 or over living up to a 45-minute drive from the 17 centres are being written to with the option of choosing to arrange a vaccination there or at a pharmacy site through the new national booking service. Alternatively people can choose to wait to be contacted shortly by their local GP-led vaccination service.

The NHS sent out 641,000 invitations last week and another 380,000 are landing on doormats this weekend. Another half a million will go out this week.

Each centre will be capable of delivering thousands of jabs each week but scaling up and down according to vaccine supplies. Those who are unable to travel to vaccine centres, hospitals or GP-led sites, such as care home residents, are already being jabbed at home.

Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, said: “The NHS vaccination programme, the biggest in NHS history, is off to a strong start with more than three million people receiving the life-saving jab, including more than a third of those aged 80 or over. We are adding more sites as more vaccine supplies become available, so that people can chose a convenient option, with around a million invites sent over the last week for those aged 80 and over.

“Having worked alongside clinicians at my local hospital I know how tough it is for our staff treating an increasing number of seriously ill people with Covid-19 – so I cannot stress enough how important it is that everyone plays their part by practicing social distancing and following the national guidance.”