Jab volunteers must never be forgotten
HAVING missed out on plenty of things we would normally do over the past year and a bit, there is probably one thing that we will remember doing – and be telling future generations about.
It is our vaccine – the thing that is offering us a way out of the Covid nightmare of the past 14 months.
For the record, I had my first one on Saturday.
I think most people of newspaperreading age would have had their first jab by now, and possibly even their second, so I had my doubts about whether there was much I could add to the issue.
But then I realised that here we are, six months after vaccinations were first being given, and the programme is still going on – and all the effort which it entails.
My jab, actually, was on the exact six-month anniversary of the very first vaccination which was given out in the UK.
Margaret Keenan, a then 90-yearold grandmother, was the first to have a vaccine, receiving the Pfizer jab at just after 6.30am on December 8 at University Hospital, Coventry.
The national media were there to see Mrs Keenan receive her jab, as it was hailed as a vital step in our road to recovery from the pandemic.
Some 50 million jabs later (that’s a mix of first and second doses) and there were no cameras or reporters in attendance when I had my jab at Home Park mass vaccination centre on Saturday.
But there were plenty of hardy volunteers, many braving wind and rain to help hundreds, if not thousands, of people to get their first dose of the vaccine.
There were volunteers pointing the way into the centre, organising us all into queues that snaked their way through a giant, drafty marquee.
There were volunteers to check us in, making sure we got a pamphlet about the side-effects of the jab we were about to have – the Moderna vaccine.
And there were yet more volunteers pointing people towards the nurses sat at tables checking to make sure we had no allergies, before it was time to be ushered into a cubicle for the actual business of sticking the needle into your arm.
Finally, there was a last set of smiling volunteers allocated to the recovery tent, where they were sure you weren’t going to keel over before they sent you on your way.
I know we all clapped for carers, and stuck up rainbow images in support of the NHS, and of course we do appreciate them. But how about those volunteers?
They were the ones who really came across as being vital to the process of getting so many people through the system in an orderly fashion.
One smiling gentleman who said he had already had both doses of the vaccine – with no ill effects – told me that volunteers each do four-hour shifts. He said this as he urged one of the paid nurses to go and get a break, saying they worked far longer.
We have all no doubt taken a keen interest in the nightly statistics on how many vaccines have been given out, hailing the numbers as they steadily rose until we were counting into the millions.
It has given us a lift, a sort of inverse count to the awful toll of Covid cases and deaths which we all watched at the start of the pandemic.
Yet there should be another figure which would also be worthy of our attention, and that is the number of volunteer hours which have been totted up.
As much as people have given our politicians credit for ordering the vaccines, it has taken a relative army of volunteers to ensure their smooth delivery.
So let’s not forget them when it comes to retelling the full story.
It has taken a relative army of volunteers to ensure the smooth delivery of vaccines