Surgery which gave jab to footballers cleared of wrongdoing
AN investigation has concluded that the surgery which administered Covid-19 vaccines to six Chesterfield Football Club employees did not breach NHS guidelines.
Stubley Medical Centre, Dronfield, sparked national controversy when it gave three players and three other staff members from the club the Pfizer vaccine at the beginning of the year.
The issue was the subject of an investigation by NHS Derby and Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
When the probe was launched, the DCG said it was “unacceptable to jump the queue”, as at the time Pfizer jabs were only being offered to the most vulnerable people and those over 70-years-old.
From the beginning the club and medical centre have maintained the jabs were offered as a last resort, as the batch of vaccines would have been thrown away otherwise, due to them being removed from the sub-zero temperature they are stored at.
One worker at the Stubley Medical Centre told the BBC: “They had to get there within 15 minutes or it would have gone down the drain.”
The recent investigation confirms this to be true and deems it a viable reason for the jabs to be offered.
A statement from the CCG to the PA news agency read: “The NHS has a duty to follow up reports of vaccinations being administered to people outside of the cohorts as specified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
“As such, NHS Derby & Derbyshire CCG conducted a review of reported vaccinations outside of cohorts in one of our Local Vaccination Services (LVSs) on behalf of NHS England and Improvement.
“The review found that a small number of patients who were not at that point in an eligible cohort had been vaccinated; the principal aim of the LVS in taking this action was the avoidance of vaccine waste.
“This was done in line with NHS guidance that permits vaccinations for patients outside of the announced cohort in exceptional circumstances.
“The matter is now closed and we continue to be very grateful to staff at the Local Vaccination Service for their significant efforts and success in delivering the vaccination programme to date.”
The Dronfield medical centre was subjected to angry phone calls and threats, after many felt the jabs deserved to go to more vulnerable members of the public, although the players and staff in question were also said to be in a vulnerable category.
It is also understood the club were told they might be placed on a stand-by list at the surgery to be contacted if they had spare doses at short notice.
Chesterfield Football Club has declined to comment any further on the matter .
PLANS to reopen a railway line running through Derbyshire Leicester have moved a step closer to becoming reality.
It comes after Transport Secretary Grant Shapps pledged further cash to develop the proposals.
The Government has approved a £50,000 grant from its rail Ideas Fund for the Campaign to Reopen Ivanhoe Line (CRIL) to produce a business case for the line to operate passenger services.
The Ivanhoe line runs from Leicester through South Derbyshire to Burton but is currently used for freight transport only, having been closed to passengers since 1964.
That happened after British Railways chairman Dr Richard Beeching closed thousands of stations and hundreds of branch lines to make the nationalised railways profitable again.
There is now growing optimism, as part of the Government’s programme to reopen disused railway lines, that the long-running campaign to reopen the line will succeed. If it did reopen, the stations on the line would include Moira, Ashby, Coalville, Ellistown, Meynell’s Gorse and Leicester
South. The Ideas Fund is part of the Government’s Restoring your Railways programme, which is designed to improve local transport links, and is a key part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
The Department for Transport and Network Rail will now work closely with CRIL to develop plans and to make the case for reopening the line to paying passengers.
Burton MP Kate Griffiths, who meets regularly with CRIL, has been urging ministerial colleagues to back the plans, and has welcomed the funding announcement.
She said: “I want to say thank you to all those who have been leading the CRIL campaign over many years to get it to the stage it is now.
“In particular, I want to pay tribute to the late Geoff Bushell, who passed away last autumn, and led the campaign for many years.
“I am sure he would have been delighted to see the project reaching this crucial stage at which we have been given a significant sum of money by the Government to produce a business case for reopening the line.
“Although there is still a long way to go to in making this project a reality, this funding is a vote of confidence from the Government that the Ivanhoe line can work, and it is now down to us locally to prove that case for its reopening.
“I will be continuing my efforts as the MP for Burton to convince ministers of the benefits the Ivanhoe line would provide for our communities.”