24-hour jabs Round-the-clock vaccinations ‘as soon as possible’
PRIME Minister Boris Johnson has promised that the delivery of the coronavirus vaccine will be offered around the clock “as soon as possible”, after pressure grew from across the country for a faster roll-out of the jab programme.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Mr Johnson said there would be a move to providing jabs 24 hours a day, seven days a week – saying Health Secretary Matt Hancock would announce details shortly.
Mr Johnson said the plan was to extend opening hours of vaccination centres. At the moment, most sites run from 8am to 10pm.
The 24-7 service would be piloted in a small number of places first, with NHS staff likely to be offered the option of overnight vaccinations first. One of the centres would be likely to be the one at Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol.
Mr Johnson said supply was the limiting factor at the moment.
On Monday, during a visit to the new Covid centre at Ashton Gate, Mr Johnson and a Number 10 spokesperson had played down the idea that the centre and the other six across the country could be running 24 hours a day. The Prime Minister’s spokesperson later said it was not believed “there was a clamour for it”.
On Monday, the man in charge of the vaccination roll-out programme, Tim Whittlestone, confirmed that the Ashton Gate hub did have the capacity to switch from its current 12-hour-a-day opening times, to a 24-hour, sevendays-a-week facility, but the equations of matching supplies of the vaccine with demand to be innoculated were ‘complex’, and he said that at the moment they were concentrating on a steady build-up to a target of 10,000 jabs a week there.
On Tuesday, the Post revealed that when we asked followers of our Facebook page if they would be prepared to have a Covid vaccination at 3am, more than 800 people said “yes” within a matter of minutes.
Then, yesterday, a government source told the Mirror there was a proposal for a 24/7 vaccine centre but only for NHS staff on night shifts, not the wider public.
The source also said there was not yet a decision about where any 24/7 centre would go.
Asked yesterday about 24/7 vaccines on BBC Breakfast, Mr Hancock said: “I’m absolutely up for doing that if it helps to speed up the vaccination programme.
“I can’t see that being the major factor because 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 and we’re absolutely up for that.”
Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi told MPs that, while he was willing to do anything to scale up the rollout, he had to ensure it was targeting the most vulnerable.
Earlier this week, the PM’s press secretary suggested there wasn’t a “clamour” for vaccine appointments for the over-80s late into the night.
Mr Hancock admitted some GPs have paused vaccinations because there isn’t enough supply after they finished inoculating local over-80s.
Mr Hancock admitted there is not as much supply “as we’d like” and “if I had more supply, we would go faster”.