The Times newspaper reported that everyone aged over 50 in Britain will be offered a third coronavirus vaccine shot in the autumn in a bid to completely eradicate the threat from the infection by Christmas.

Trials of 2 options are under way, supervised by the chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, according to the newspaper.

The first option involves vaccines specifically modified to tackle new variants. The second is for a third jab of one of the 3 versions already in use: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Oxford-AstraZeneca, the newspaper added.

Government statistics revealed on Tuesday that a total of over 34.6 million people in Britain were administered a first shot of the vaccine.

Britain, which has a population of 67 million, has deals for over 510 million jabs of 8 different COVID-19 vaccines, some of which remain under development.

Last week, health minister Matt Hancock said Britain will purchase 60 million more shots of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine, in a deal that more than doubles the country’s supply of the shot ahead of a booster program later this year.

Britain has now ordered a total of 100 million jabs of the Pfizer vaccine, one of three COVID-19 shots being rolled out in the country.