Pre-bookable vaccine slots at Leicester's hospitals have all been filled after thousands of people took up the offer.

Up to 1,000 appointments a day were made available via hospital hubs but they are now booked up.

Patients are being reassured that the roll out continues and those eligible for a jab, will be contacted in due course.

Offering the slots out to priority groups meant that the vaccine centres were able to prevent the "waste of precious vaccine supplies".

A spokesperson for Leicester's hospitals said: "An amazing response from the public has enabled the local NHS to fill time-limited Covid-19 vaccine appointments and prevent the waste of precious vaccine supplies.

"The slots, which were advertised on Monday 25 January and were available until 1 February at the Leicester General Hospital, Leicester Royal Infirmary and Glenfield Hospital vaccination centres for people in priority groups, have now been filled. This mechanism for booking is now closed.

"People shouldn't worry if they haven't been able to get one of the slots as those who are eligible will be invited for their vaccination soon. This may be via their GP surgery or for anyone in the priority groups who hasn't yet been invited for a vaccine and who is within 45 mins travelling time, this may be the vaccination centre which launched this week at the Peepul Centre in Leicester."

With supply and delivery information often filtering through to centres at the last minute, all is being done to ensure as soon as a batch arrives, it's in the arms of patients as soon as possible.

Caroline Trevithick, chief nurse for Leicester's CCGs, said: "Any vaccine that's coming into the patch we are making sure it goes straight out, we are not sitting on them at all, we really want to get them into the arms of people."

Fairly short notice in supplies arriving in the county has resulted in GPs knocking on doors in some areas to invite people in for vaccines.

"We've had to do rapid turnaround booking people in, we've had to use any means available at times to get people booked in."

She added: "We had an opportunity to get patients vaccinated through the hospital hubs, we had some media support with that this week.

"That worked really well and got us through a patch that meant we didn't lose any vaccines. That's now closed and not open anymore, so it's back to the GPs and normal booking methods."