Professor Brian MacCraith:

I can give an answer to that. Going back to what I said earlier, it is not possible to give absolute certainty on these matters, but I will give an example we have been working through on various models.

Residential care facilities are in the number one cohort. We know there are 589 such facilities covering close to 78,000 people, between residents and staff. We have done modelling of different rates of arrival and what we can expect at this stage with some degree of positivity is that the Pfizer vaccine will be approved quickly and that, perhaps, the Moderna vaccine will be too. The rate of arrival of that vaccine could change things. If one looks at those numbers and at the initial cohort of vaccinators, one could think that cohort might complete their vaccinations by mid to late February, for example.

Every time we mention something like that, it becomes a fact. It is not. These are models and scenarios we are working through under various rates of arrival, timings of approval of vaccines and so on. The team working on this is working through all of those. In vaccination strategies and plans around the world, people are showing indications of the curves in these diagrams, but dates and numbers are not given because, at this stage, it is impossible to give certainty around these. As I said earlier, we want to give certainty to members of the public around this and to manage their expectations in as transparent a way as possible.