A Covid-19 vaccination could be an 18-month wait ’if not longer’, the Health Minister warned.

Minister David Ashford stressed that people shouldn’t put their hopes on a vaccination being made available on the market any time soon.

This was in response to a question at the press briefing on Monday about how his department is keeping up-to-date with possible vaccines against the virus to ensure the island is able to get it quickly and as a priority.

He said: ’We look at what’s going on around the world. With vaccination, I’ve got to be brutally honest, it’s going to be potentially a long, long way off.’

He added: ’The way that vaccines are developed and the way they are tested, even in the US where I know of a particular test of a vaccine they’ve skipped the animal trials to go straight to human ones, but that is still normally an 18-month lead-in period.

’So I’m afraid the vaccines are not the great panacea that I think some people hope will be. There is going to be still probably about 18 months before any form of reliable vaccine will be on the market.’