The NHS will launch a round-the-clock vaccination service as soon as possible, Boris Johnson has said.

The Prime Minister said the process of protecting people from coronavirus is already going “exceptionally fast” but “at the moment the limit is on supply” of the vaccine.

“We will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can,” he told MPs.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will set out further details “in due course”, Mr Johnson said.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Johnson said: “At the moment the limit is on supply, we have a huge network – 233 hospitals, 1,000 GP surgeries, 200 pharmacies and 50 mass vaccination centres and they are going … exceptionally fast.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he understood that pilot 24-hour centres were not yet open to the public but there would be a “huge clamour”.

Mr Hancock earlier questioned whether there would be demand for a round-the-clock vaccination operation.

He said the NHS is “absolutely up for doing that” but “most people want to get vaccinated in the daytime, and also most people who are doing the vaccinations want to give them in the daytime, but there may be circumstances in which that would help”.

More than 2.4 million people across the UK have so far received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

In Scotland, vaccinations could begin on a 24-hour schedule when mass centres open in late February or early March, the country’s Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, said.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine provides the most straightforward route to protect around 15 million of the most vulnerable people by mid-February because it is logistically less complicated than the Pfizer jab, which needs to be kept deep-frozen.

Tom Keith-Roach, president at AstraZeneca UK, said 1.1 million doses of the company’s Covid-19 jab have been released to date.

“We are scaling up very rapidly and this will happen imminently to releasing two million doses a week,” he told MPs.