More Than 11,000 Vaccine Volunteers To Join NHS

Those making the transition are in for ‘rewarding careers', says health secretary

- Sam Hancock

Dance teachers and chefs are among more than 11,000 people who volunteered to administer Covid jabs to Britons during the pandemic and have since decided to take up full-time jobs within the NHS.

When coronavirus began spreading across the world in early 2020, researchers got to work engineering jabs to fight the disease. By December, Margaret Keenan had become the first person in the UK - and the world - to receive the PfizerBioNTech injection outside of medical trials.

Around 71,000 people took paid roles and thousands more volunteered to help with the UK's Covid vaccination programme, making it the largest of its kind in the history of the NHS. So far, the UK's rollout has seen more than 120 million doses administered. New figures, released by the NHS, show that 11,483 people who helped with the programme have now started a new career in the health service.

Health secretary Sajid Javid welcomed the figures, saying those who had made the transition were in for “rewarding careers”.