Hancock in jab farce
Minister left red-faced on visit to GP surgery when new delivery of Oxford vaccine fails to turn up
THE Health Secretary was left red-faced behind his mask yesterday when a delivery of the new Oxford vaccine failed to turn up at the GP surgery he was visiting to promote the rollout.
In scenes compared to political comedy The Thick Of It, Matt Hancock was told that the first delivery of the jab to the surgery was delayed by 24 hours.
But Labour’s health spokesman, Jonathan Ashworth, said: ‘Sadly it’s no laughing matter.’ The farce came amid reports of shortages and delivery problems across the UK.
The Bloomsbury Surgery in Camden, north London, visited by Mr Hancock was one of several to report problems with doses of vaccines not turning up as arranged, forcing doctors to cancel appointments.
One GPs’ leader said the issues could be ‘demoralising’ for staff and ‘confusing and disappointing for patients’.
At a Downing Street press conference last night, Boris Johnson admitted that the early phases of the rollout would see ‘lumpiness and bumpiness’, but was confident the
‘You get us the vaccine and we will deliver’
vast majority of vaccines were getting where they were needed. The Prime Minister is aiming to give jabs to the 13million most vulnerable Britons by mid-February.
Sources said many of the delays were a result of the change to policy over second doses, with some of these shipments getting diverted to different GP practices, who haven’t yet received any supplies.
Some surgeries are not being told their anticipated stock has been sent elsewhere, or it is coming too late to alter the hundreds of appointments already scheduled.
Ammara Hughes, a partner at the practice Mr Hancock visited, said doctors were ‘frustrated’. The GP hub, which has been delivering jabs since mid-December, said they were vaccinating 500 people on their busiest days.
Dr Hughes told Sky News: ‘It’s just more frustrating than a concern because we’ve got the capacity to vaccinate. And if we had a regular supply we do have the capacity to vaccinate 3-4,000 patients a week.
‘If we could get the AstraZeneca then we could easily vaccinate 500 a day, which would ease the pressure on the health service and we could get more and more people vaccinated quickly and hopefully get out of the pandemic.’
She said Mr Hancock seemed ‘surprised’ that doctors did not know when supplies would turn up amid the ‘ad hoc’ nature of many deliveries. She added: ‘What I said to the Health Secretary was: We are willing, we are able. You get us the vaccines, we will deliver.’
Speaking outside the surgery, Mr Hancock maintained that the ‘rate-limiting’ factor for jabs was supply from the manufacturers.
He said: ‘For the first three days with the Oxford vaccine we did it in hospitals to check that it was working well. It’s working well so now we can make sure that it gets to all those GP surgeries that, like this one, can do all the vaccinations that are needed. The rate-limiting step is the supply of vaccine. We’re working with the companies – both Pfizer and AstraZeneca – to increase the supply.’
The day before, more than 100 elderly patients were left ‘half-frozen to death’ after queuing for hours in Chelsea, west London, due to a batch of Pfizer vaccines arriving six hours late.
Geoffrey Reed, 62, who served in the Royal Anglian Regiment, was taking another veteran, in his eighties, to get the vaccine.
He said: ‘After an hour of standing still I felt like I was on exercise in Norway. My colleague didn’t complain once. He has that stiff upper lip attitude.
‘But it is a disgrace that our Army veterans are treated like this.’
Meanwhile, MPs in Birmingham wrote to Mr Hancock querying why no doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab had been delivered to the city. They warned doctors only had supplies of the Pfizer vaccine to last until today with ‘no clarity on when further supplies will arrive’.
Dr Rosemary Leonard, a GP in Dulwich, south London, said her group of practices was initially told the first delivery would arrive on December 28, but that it kept on being pushed back.
She said: ‘We are raring to go, but have no vaccines. Why?’
Elsewhere, the Betsi Cadwaladr health board in Wales apologised after patients were left waiting in queues for up to three hours, blaming the delay on the training of ‘new vaccinators’.
Both AstraZeneca and Pfizer have said they are on track to deliver vaccines as agreed with the Government, with the lengthy batch approval process widely blamed for the sluggish start.