The UK’s top four medical officers have banded together to warn healthcare workers.

Health workers have been warned the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine will only have a ‘marginal impact’ on hospital numbers as the UK heads into a ‘hard’ winter.

The nation’s top four medical officers have banded together to write a letter that cautions social mixing over the festive season will likely put more pressure on the NHS.

It comes after the UK became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, with the first injections set to take place on Tuesday.

Covid-19 will not disappear completely even once most of the population is injected, Professor Chris Whitty of England, Dr Gregor Smith of Scotland, Dr Frank Atherton of Wales and Dr Michael McBride of Northern Ireland warned in the letter.

It read: ‘Winter is always a challenging time for the NHS and wider health and social care service. This year will be especially hard due to Covid-19.

‘Although the very welcome news about vaccines means that we can look forward to 2021 with greater optimism, vaccine deployment will have only a marginal impact in reducing numbers coming into the health service with Covid over the next three months.

‘The actions and self-discipline of the whole population during lockdowns and other restrictions have helped reduce the peak and in most parts of the four nations hospital numbers are likely to fall over the next few weeks, but not everywhere.

The chief medical officers praised health workers for responding ‘magnificently’ to the challenges of the coronavirus crisis and stressed how important it is for staff to support one another.

However, they added it was ‘essential’ the next months were used to learn more about the virus to help inform treatments.