Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Jabs for almost all district’s over-80s by end of the week
Race to vaccinate care home residents
The monumental efforts of healthcare workers will tomorrow see the number of people vaccinated against Covid across the district soar past 10,000.
The first jabs were only delivered locally on December 15, but in the month since almost all over-80s have received their vaccines.
In an effort to ramp up the roll-out even further, Canterbury’s Spitfire cricket ground is now set to be used to vaccinate healthcare staff.
More than 10,000 Covid jabs are set to have been administered to the district’s over-80s by tomorrow evening, the Gazette can reveal.
But patients are being urged to stop calling GP surgeries to ask about the vaccine - after one practice was inundated with almost 4,000 calls in a single day. Residents’ eagerness to get inoculated was seen at the weekend - with long queues stretching out from Northgate Medical Practice, and gridlocked traffic outside Estuary View in Whitstable.
Health chiefs say most of the over-80s across the district will have received Covid-19 vaccines by the end of tomorrow. Canterbury South Primary Care Network (PCN) clinical director Judith Marsh expects residents from 12 of the city’s care homes to get jabs over the rest of this week. Meanwhile, 80% of Canterbury South’s over-80s have already had a vaccine.
“The two Canterbury Primary Care Networks are hoping to deliver in excess of 4,500 vaccines for our Canterbury patients aged 80 and over by the end of this week,” she said. Ms Marsh says they are aiming to have inoculated about 90% of the city’s over-80s by the end of next week, as they target housebound patients and more care home residents.
East Kent Hospitals Trust has also revealed plans to launch a new vaccination site aimed expressly at healthcare staff, at Kent Cricket’s Spitfire Ground in Canterbury. It hopes to administer 7,000 vaccines a week at the site, which is set to launch as early as Monday. In Whitstable meanwhile, almost 2,700 people have received their injections – which equates to 85% of the town’s over-80s.
A further 700 were set to have a jab yesterday (Wednesday), and more care homes are scheduled to receive their jabs today - taking the total vaccinated in the town to 3,500 by the end of the week.
Dr John Ribchester, senior and executive partner at Whitstable Medical Practice, told the Gazette: “We’re dealing with the over-80s, health and social care workers and care home residents first.
“We’re almost through that group now and then we’ll move down to the over-75s.” Dr Ribchester previously said that all of the town’s care homes would receive a dose of vaccine before the new year.
But following complications transporting the Pfizer injections – which need to be stored between 2C and 8C, once thawed – nurses had to make do with inoculating 57% of care home residents.
“We’re having another sweep to complete the care homes,” said Dr Ribchester. “We’ve now got some of the Oxford-astrazeneca ones. They’re much more mobile. You can move them around several care homes.”
He admits the roll-out is proving a “logistical nightmare” because supply chains are not yet “robust”.
“For instance, Tuesday’s [batch] was expected to come at 8.30am, but it arrived at 11.30am and we had to move everyone from the morning to late afternoon,” he said.
Long queues could be seen on Saturday outside Estuary View Medical Centre, as eligible patients waited for vaccinations at the town’s drivethrough clinic.
Dr Ribchester says it had been the practice’s “busiest day ever”, with 1,200 jabs administered in just eight hours. “At one stage, we had a 45-minute wait – for which I apologise – but as someone pointed out on social media, it was a good traffic jam to be in,” he added. Meanwhile, in Herne Bay, the town’s PCN clinical director, Dr Jeremy Carter, says about 700 people have already received their second dose of the vaccine. More than 3,000 residents have also received their first injections – with 400 more expected to be inoculated by the end of the week.
Dr Carter added: “Next week, we expect to do nearer 1,300. “If it goes well, we will have delivered over 5,000.”
This comes as Heron Medical Practice - which runs sites in Herne Bay and Hersden - revealed it had been inundated with more than five calls a minute on Friday.
Bosses believe the spike in calls was partly triggered by an NHS letter to 50- to 64-year-olds asking them to book flu vaccine appointments, while many patients were phoning in to ask for a Covid-19 jab. Business manager Helen Sutton said: “There were so many trying to get through at the same time that it blocked the whole system.
“It was just relentless.” Heron Medical Practice is urging residents not to clog up its phone lines with calls about the coronavirus jab, and to instead wait to be contacted by the practice.
It is also telling those who have received the flu vaccine letter to email kmccg.admin-stannes@nhs.net instead.