Britain is facing the worst weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, its chief medical officer said, with the health service facing a “dangerous time” as deaths and cases hit record highs before the rollout of a mass vaccination programme, Reuters reports.

In a bid to get on top of the pandemic and to try to restore some degree of normality by spring, Britain is rushing out its largest ever vaccination programme, with shots to be offered to all those in its top four priority categories — about 15 million people — by the middle of next month.

Britain was the first country to approve vaccines developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and by Pfizer/BioNTech, and on Friday approved Moderna’s shot.