Leftover jab doses given to front line
VACCINATION PROGRAMME IS ON TARGET – HEALTH CHIEF
MORE details have been revealed of the vaccine roll-out in Nottinghamshire.
Currently, the number of vaccines administered in the county has not been confirmed but the data is expected to be released nationally going forward.
But Dr Andy Haynes, executive lead of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System, said: “Clearly we have significant numbers going through at the moment.”
When asked about missed appointments, he said levels were “very low” with only “a handful” of wasted vaccine doses, partly being addressed by giving out leftover vaccines to frontline workers.
Dr Haynes explained: “Because of the logistics, particularly with a vaccine that needs to stay in very cold storage, once you’ve broken into the cohort of the vaccine you have to use it then within a specified time period.
“Health and care workers are defined as critical workers now in Government guidelines and where there are vaccines that would otherwise be wasted we know that frontline and health and care workers are now part of the priority cohort so they are being vaccinated.”
With around one in 50 people across Nottinghamshire affected by Covid, Dr Haynes also explained how crucial the two approved Covid-19 vaccines would be in preventing deaths.
“For care home residents, we’d need to vaccinate 20 to prevent one predicted death,” he said.
“For the over-80s it’s 160 that we need to vaccinate to prevent one death, so in fact, if we vaccinate that care home resident population and the over-80s, we’ll prevent two-thirds of the predicted deaths.
“That contrasts to the under-50 population where we’d have to vaccinate nearly 50,000 to prevent one death so the whole programme is based on minimising the number of deaths we can expect from this wave of Covid in the coming weeks and months.
“It’s targeted towards getting those care home residents and 80-plus year olds vaccinated and we expect to do that by the end of January with their first doses. Then moving into the over 75s, over 70s and within that protecting health and care workers partly because of their risk but also because they can transmit the virus between patients so there is a clear rationale here.”
Before Christmas, health bosses hoped to deliver 80,000 vaccines a week in Notts by the end of January, which Dr Haynes said was “coming online as planned”.
“The sites are coming online as they’ve been approved and we’ve been able to get them up and running. “
More than 1,000 people have been employed from more than 2,500 applicants, but Dr Haynes encouraged people to keep coming forward.