PONTELAND Health Centre is one of two vaccination sites that will be administering the coronavirus vaccine to patients in the Tyne Valley.

The West Northumberland Primary Care Network of GPs identified two surgeries to rollout the jab - one in Hexham and one at the other end of the district in Ponteland.

The supply of vaccines was made available at the start of the week, and will be distributed fairly among patients of each GP surgery.

A spokesman for Ponteland Medical Group urged patients not to call in to try and book a vaccine via Facebook.

The post read: "Initially supplies of the vaccine are limited so it is likely to take several months to roll out the vaccinations to everyone.

"If you are 80 or over you will be receiving a call to make an appointment for next week.

"We will contact patients in due course when appointments are available but please do not contact the surgery to book an appointment unless we tell you to do so. We are very busy dealing with our usual workload as well as making calls to book patients in to our over 80's."

Doctor John Green, clinical director of the West Northumberland PCN, said: "I'm really happy to be part of this.

"It's such an opportunity and we need to maximise it.

"It's taken a bit of organising, but that's one of the advantages of the primary care network, a collaboration of 14 practices.

"It's enabled us all to work together over these last three or four weeks to roll this out - it's been an amazing effort.

"Each site has received its allocated amount of vaccine this week.

"Our staff are really looking forward to it. These occasions are usually quite a jolly affair, and these patients have waited all year for it. This first group, we've gone straight to the over 80s which is a very vulnerable group."