Healthcare workers from the Republic of Ireland who work north of the border will be eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine that will start to be rolled out in Northern Ireland from next week.
Hundreds of people cross the border every day to work in hospitals and care homes.
Stormont Health Minister Robin Swann was asked about their eligibility for the vaccine by RTÉ News at a Stormont press briefing this afternoon.
"We will support our healthcare workers as they come forward and meet the need of accessibility of this vaccine," he replied.
"If they meet the priority groups and they're currently employed within our healthcare service and work in it they will be eligible for that vaccine."
Earlier, Robin Swann said Covid-19 vaccinations could start in Northern Ireland next week, days earlier than the originally anticipated 14 December rollout date.
Health Minister Robin Swann said: "We would hope to have a supply of vaccine next week, which could actually see that date come forward by a few days."
Mr Swann said Northern Ireland would receive 25,000 vaccine doses in the initial batch.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, he said: "We'll be working through the exact logistics of the dispatch of the vaccine from Belgium across to the UK and how we get that distributed through your system."
But he urged caution and stressed that compliance with Covid-19 regulations is still vital.
"It's the beginning of the end, it's not the end," he said.
"It will be weeks and it'll be well into next year before we're looking to that larger mass vaccination programme across the population of Northern Ireland.
"So, as I say, this is the beginning of them. We're not there yet. So we do ask the people in Northern Ireland to continue to maintain and follow the regulations that are there."
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He added: "This is light at the end of the tunnel, but that tunnel to me is still well into next year."
Addressing safety concerns raised by some members of the public, Mr Swann insisted no corners had been cut by the vaccine regulators.
Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster said the vaccine approval is an early "Christmas present".
"This does give us the road back to normality and I think everybody has been waiting for that," she said.
"I'm incredibly proud today that the United Kingdom has been able to do this and that we will all benefit from this vaccine coming."
Ms Foster said the rollout of the vaccine would be a "huge challenge" and the Stormont Executive also has to plan for economic recovery.
"So we need to find a way out of this that brings recovery back to the United Kingdom and to Northern Ireland, of course, in particular, and that's what we'll be working on in the weeks to come as well as working on, of course, all of the logistical challenges on the rollout of the vaccine and mass testing," she said.
Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said the vaccine approval marks a "turning point".
"I think this is the news that people have been waiting for now for the best of ten months when we've all been challenged to the limits, so I think this is a very positive story," she told Radio Ulster.
"This is a turning point in our Covid battle, and I think people should feel that, and they're right to feel it because it has been such a challenging time."
Ms O'Neill acknowledged that the Pfizer vaccine is the most "problematic" in terms of the logistical challenges over storage and batch sizes.
She said she would have no issue taking the vaccine herself, but added that it is for medical experts to convince those people who have "natural and understandable" concerns.
Ms O'Neill rejected any suggestion of a mandatory vaccination programme.
"I think it's about freedom of choice," she said.
"I think I would be more in the camp of encouraging people to take the vaccine, I think it's important that people do.
"But I don't believe that it should be mandatory, I don't believe that in any sort of scenario.
"I think it's for us to convince people of the merits and why it's important, and I think it's for the medical and scientific evidence to back that all up and then people to make their decisions."
Meanwhile, speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Dr Nicola Heron, a GP in Derry, said a patient from the Republic who is already registered with a GP in Northern Ireland, will get the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine in the same way as someone living in the North.
Dr Heron said that people will not be able to register with a GP in the North now, if they are not living or working there, to avail of the vaccine.
She said for healthcare workers, the vaccine is top of all their Christmas present lists, as "there's genuinely no other way out of this pandemic, other than a vaccine".
Dr Heron said she expects that the vaccine will start to be rolled out to healthcare workers in Northern Ireland on 14 December, as it will arrive from Belgium next week and then will take a few days to distribute it from London to the four regions of the UK.
It comes as the Executive Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme Dr Mike Ryan said he is not in favour of enforced vaccination of individuals.
"I believe when you put something into your body it should be your choice to do that", he told an Irish conference, Virtual Festival BioMedica 2020 today.
Dr Ryan said that countries should be driving vaccine demand, by focusing on positive marketing of immunisation and telling people why they should take a vaccine.
He said that it is okay for people to have reasonable hesitancy to vaccination.
"Being vaccine hesitant does not make you a bad person. It makes you a person with questions", he told the conference.
He said the challenge for the system is to answer those questions and provide the information upfront for people.
"The idea of people being forced to be vaccinated in order to carry out their daily lives - that's a bridge I would rather we would not have to cross," he said.
However, Dr Ryan pointed out that there were occupational reasons to be vaccinated and certain areas where vaccination may be required, for example, a health worker dealing with immuno-compromised people, or working in a laboratory with dangerous pathogens.
Dr Ryan said there are particular circumstances where governments may decide on vaccine requirements, for example if a country gets 95% coverage with a vaccine and the virus effectively disappears, a government may feel it wants to require people coming into the country to be vaccinated.
This was a policy and political decision to be made between member states.
He said there were several factors involved in vaccination.
There is the ethics of it from an individual perspective and the ethics of it from a community perspective, he said.
It raised issues about personal choice versus the rights of the community, Dr Ryan added.
Additional reporting: Fergal Bowers, PA
