New deliveries mean vaccinations can be stepped up

HEALTHCARE staff in the Ashbourne area have almost finished the first five cohorts, and St Oswald’s Hospital will be ready to deliver dozens more doses today and tomorrow.

The Clifton Road hospital has taken delivery of the Pfizer vaccine this week, which will help staff giving first doses to the last of the over-65s, and to plough on vaccinating the sixth cohort – younger patients with underlying conditions, along with adult carers.

Patients will be sent text messages, or will be telephoned, to invite them to an appointment for a jab. Doctors have asked people not to phone their surgeries.

Vaccine co-ordinator Dr Penny Blackwell, of Hannage Brook Medical Centre, said second vaccines will begin the 11th week after people have had the first vaccine – and enough doses have been “ring-fenced”.

She also conceded that the next cohort will be a challenge, as it is a huge group – but said staff are doing their best to work through them as quickly as possible.

She said: “It is going to be a difficult cohort to manage, because it is a really big group. We know that the single highest risk factor for serious illness from Covid is age, so we’re going to try to work down this group from oldest to youngest.

“It is inevitable that sometimes someone that is slightly younger in that cohort may be vaccinated first.

Please bear with us, we’re going to try our very best to do this in order. But it’s not always that simple.”

Figures have shown Derbyshire as a whole is leading the UK’S response to the pandemic with its vaccination programme, and more than 90 per cent of the county’s residents in the top four priority Covid-19 vaccination groups have now had their jabs.

The latest data from NHS England shows 222,792 Derbyshire residents have had their first Covid-19 vaccine doses, 92.5 per cent of all those in the top four priority groups.

Only Somerset has a higher percentage record at 93.4 per cent, according to the figures.

The data up to February 4 has also shown that 3,557 Derbyshire residents had had their second vaccine doses.

This number will increase rapidly through March as residents return for their second doses, 12 weeks on from their first doses, which started in early December.

The shift to patients returning for second doses is expected to see the overall proportion of people vaccinated slow substantially.

Health chiefs also say it may be much harder to get as close to 100 per cent vaccination of key groups as the figure nears completion, with some either currently unable to have the vaccine, some making a personal choice not to have it or others who cannot be contacted.