Sports centres in Harborough and Lutterworth are being offered as emergency Covid-19 vaccination hubs

Sports centres in Market Harborough and Lutterworth are being offered to the NHS to be used as emergency Covid-19 vaccination hubs.

The offer is being made by Harborough District Council as the Government urgently ramps up efforts to vaccinate the first four priority groups in England over the next six weeks.

Cllr Phil King, who leads the authority, said they would only be too pleased to help – as Harborough Leisure Centre on Northampton Road is already being deployed as a busy coronavirus testing site.

Patients have already been vaccinated at Market Harborough Medical Centre and the Old School Surgery in Kibworth.

But people from Lutterworth are being forced to journey to Oadby to get their Covid-19 shots.

Cllr King said it would be much easier for local people to receive their vaccinations at Lutterworth Sports Centre on Coventry Road.

Calling for the Pfizer and new Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccines to be given to people more quickly, he told the Harborough Mail this week: “The good news is that we are starting to roll out vaccines and people are being vaccinated against the coronavirus across Harborough as we speak.

“But we have to vaccinate people faster.

“We should be pulling out all the stops to give people the new life-saving shots seven days a week, as many hours as we can every day,” declared Cllr King.

“The vaccines are clearly our way forward out of this 10-month national crisis.”

A Government spokeswoman said: “We are hugely grateful for all offers of support and assistance as we continue to expand our vaccination programme – the biggest vaccination programme in this country’s history.

“This is a huge national effort.

“The NHS is putting into practice the decades of experience it has spent delivering large scale vaccination programmes - and it has already vaccinated over 1.3 million people nationwide.”