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The Armed Forces and NHS have begun urgent preparations for the distribution of coronavirus vaccine by the weekend, The Telegraph understands.
A programme of mass vaccination will be rolled out after the Pfizer/BioNTech jab was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for use in the UK.
Military personnel have been ordered to transform about 10 sites into vaccine hubs within a fortnight.
The Nightingale hospital at the London ExCel centre, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, Bristol's Ashton Gate football stadium and the Robertson House conference facility in Stevenage will serve the capital and south of England, according to sources.
Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, the Centre for Life science park in Newcastle and Leicester racecourse will be the mass vaccine sites for the North and the Midlands.
The NHS, which is in charge of the vaccine programme, is understood to have formally requested assistance from the Ministry of Defence via the "Military aid to the civil authorities" (Maca) protocol.
The Telegraph has also learned that a major hospital trust in London expects Britain's first coronavirus vaccinations to take place as early as Monday after NHS bosses appealed for volunteers to administer the jab from 7am that day.
Prior to the Pfizer vaccine's approval on Wednesday morning, a senior Government source said: "All of these preparations are being made in advance of any decision about any vaccine being approved by the independent regulator. If one vaccine is found to be safe and effective, we can move ahead quickly with distribution – because vaccinating millions of people is a significant logistical challenge."
Every major city is set to get a dedicated mass vaccination centre, while a further 1,000 small sites will be established across England. GP surgeries, pharmacies and small health clinics will be used alongside repurposed sports centres and civic buildings.
The sites being repurposed by the Armed Forces represent the first wave of mass vaccination sites. Sources said the first vaccines could be distributed within eight hours of the regulator's decision.
Meanwhile, Imperial College Healthcare Trust, comprising five hospitals in west London, is planning to inoculate frontline staff in an intensive three-day campaign, with clinics running 13 hours a day. The internal announcement of the plans at the trust was the first direct evidence that the NHS was preparing for an imminent green light.
Because the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cannot be moved more than four times and must be stored at between -70 and -80 C, it is expected that many of the first doses will be administered to healthcare staff on hospital premises.
This is despite the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation designating them second in priority behind care home residents and workers.
An email to staff at Imperial said: "We'll be running vaccination clinics for three days from when we receive the vaccine. As we are not yet sure when that will be, we are looking for volunteers to staff the clinics to deliver the first dose from 7am-8pm, Monday December 7 through to Sunday December 13. We will be so grateful for any time you can give."
A source at the trust said a second set of staff clinics is planned for January, when a second batch of vaccine arrives.
A spokesman for Imperial College Healthcare said: "As previously reported, NHS trusts like ours are getting ready to vaccinate our staff against Covid-19.
"We categorically do not have a start date for vaccinations, as a vaccine is yet to be licensed and made available – the request to our doctors to volunteer for vaccination clinics was simply a means of making sure we would be ready to go as soon as we got the go-ahead, whenever that happens."
The jabs will be administered from only one of the trust's several sites due to the logistical issues. The trust could not say on Tuesday night when any provisional clinics for members of the public would be announced.
Due to the challenges presented by the low temperature storage requirements of the Pfizer vaccine, the Armed Forces are expected to play a role in its delivery. On Tuesday, a source said that Standing Joint Command, which oversees the military Covid Support Force, will be able to mobilise within eight hours notice of regulatory approval to start delivering the first vaccine.
As of last week, almost 3,000 personnel were assisting with 54 live Maca requests. An extra 14,000 personnel are on standby to help with Covid and other tasks under the Government's winter preparedness package.
It emerged on Tuesday that soldiers involved in testing have been instructed to rebrand one of the programmes. A military source said: "We've been banned from using the words 'mass testing'. We've got to use 'community testing' because it sounds more friendly. Mass testing sounds a bit apocalyptic, a bit concentration camp."
Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chairman of the Commons defence select committee, on Tuesday welcomed moves for the Armed Forces to help convert sites into vaccine centres as an "important step in entering the final chapter of this pandemic".
He added: "While there is still some way to go, it will lift everyone's spirits that a vaccine roll-out will soon be under way."
Pfizer and BioNTech have now applied for approval of their coronavirus vaccine in Europe, having already done so in the US and the UK. On Tuesday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) confirmed that it had received an application from the firms for conditional marketing authorisation of the vaccine known as BNT162b2.
The vaccine is 95 per cent effective and has passed its safety checks, according to data from the firm. The UK has secured orders for 40 million doses.
But leading doctors warned on Tuesday that it may be difficult to roll out the Pfizer vaccine quickly because appointments will need to be far longer than normal. Patients must be monitored for 15 minutes after the injection to check for side-effects.
Dr James Cave, the editor in chief of Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, said: "Is a vaccine that can't be transported, needs to be frozen at -70 degrees, has to be diluted, and where we're required to make people sit for 15 minutes afterwards, really fit for purpose?
"Because if you start looking at the time required for the throughput of patients, that's a completely different format to our current flu clinics, where we're able to vaccinate 500 people in an afternoon. It means we're looking at seeing only 40 people an hour – that's thousands of hours worth on top of the normal work we do. That's really worrying frontline GPs. It's a big, big ask that hasn't really been thought through at a higher level."
Amid concerns about the uptake rate of Covid vaccines, there have been calls for Boris Johnson, the Cabinet and their families to receive it first in order to assure Britons of its safety.
The proposal was made by Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne, who warned ministers against coercing the public to take the jab, arguing that such a move would "set the seal" on the Government's "reputation as the most authoritarian since the Commonwealth of the 1650s".
Conservative backbenchers also expressed unease about the creation of a "vaccine passport" for those who had received the jab. Sir Desmond and Steve Baker said it would amount to discrimination to allow businesses to refuse Britons access to their premises unless they had received the jab.