County plan for 80,000 vaccinations a week in 2021

UP to 80,000 Covid vaccinations are expected to be administered in Nottinghamshire every week in January, a medical director has said.

Dr Andy Haynes, medical director for the Integrated Care System (ICS) in Nottinghamshire, said the picture in health and social care was still concerning, with “a lot of poorly people in hospital”, but that there were “grounds for optimism”.

Speaking at a public health briefing yesterday, Dr Haynes confirmed there were 40 percent more people in hospital than during the first wave in April.

He added: “One in ten of those require support in our intensive care unit, and over half of them are needing oxygen, so we still have a poorly population in hospital.

“But I think there are some grounds for optimism, in terms of admissions we saw 247 in the seven days to November 22 and that compared to 310 the week before. So we’re seeing the number of admissions fall and that’s really important.”

In addition, Dr Haynes spoke of the vaccine roll-out on the horizon, although it has not been confirmed which vaccine it will be or where they will be given out at this stage.

“We know that the vaccines are going through the regulatory process and we are well placed in Nottinghamshire now to start administering the vaccine whichever one it is and once it becomes available,” Dr Haynes said.

“That’s a really massive, important system effort that’s involved all partners in health, social care and our local authorities.

“To give some scale of that, our flu programme this year is further ahead at this point than it was the whole of last winter, so we’re doing really well with flu vaccines. We’re administering about 20,000 to 25,000 flu vaccines a week at the moment – our GP colleagues have done a fantastic job.

“But in January with the Covid vaccine programme, we expect to be administering 80,000 vaccinations a week, so the logistics are significant and that does require that whole system response for us to get there.”