SEVEN STEPS TO FREEDOM
BIG ROLE FOR ASHTON GATE STADIUM IN CITY’S VACCINATION DRIVE
THE vaccination super-centre at Ashton Gate opens today – and we can now reveal the seven steps that get people through the process as the stadium gears up to jab tens of thousands of vulnerable people over the coming weeks.
A one-way system with barriers is in place, where hundreds of people are expected to queue as the home of Bristol City and the Bristol Bears becomes one of the biggest vaccination centres in the country
Step number one is the check-in and anyone turning up at the stadium without an appointment will be turned back, priority group or not.
At the moment over-80s are the only members of the general population eligible for vaccines so they will be at the top of the queue when the invitations go out by post or phone.
But the Government has vowed to jab everybody over 70 by by mid February and every adult in the country by autumn.
Volunteer stewards will help to keep everybody socially distanced and the medical teams at the centre will concentrate on the four priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
These are: care homes for older adults and their carers; everyone
over the age of 70; all frontline health and social care workers; everyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable. After this the Department of Health says people in groups 5 to 9 - all those aged 50 or over 16 with underlying health conditions - will start getting their first doses between mid-February and the spring.
Healthy under-50s are very unlikely to be vaccinated before Easter and the jab will not be given to children. While there is no evidence that the vaccine is unsafe for pregnant women, health chiefs need more evidence before doing a
routine rollout of the vaccine to expectant mothers. However, some pregnant women may be able to have the vaccine if they are at high risk of contracting the virus due to their line of work, or if they have a health condition which puts them at high risk of serious complications of coronavirus.
It is thought the stadium will be a scaled up version of the smaller community vaccination centres where patients are being asked to wear masks and short sleeves under their coat so they can be in and out quickly. As well as the super sites there are 775 GP-led centres and 207 hospital sites due to open by the end of this week so that nobody is more than 10 minutes away from a jab. The stadium, though, will jab people from a wider area.
Step two requires patients answer a few general health questions before moving to step three, a queue.
Step four is when the needle goes into the arm.
Step five is making their way to a room full of spacedout chairs where step six is sitting for 15 minutes to make sure all is well while reading a mural on the stadium wall about a 1994 FA cup match with Liverpool. The final step 7 is checking out.
Journalists were this weekend given a sneak preview of the south stand concourse which is filled with clinical white screens, beds, chairs and everything else needed to deal with thousands of elderly and vulnerable people.
Medical staff had not yet arrived in the stark and clinical, echoing empty room transformed by the Army. Critics say there has been a slow start to the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine which have been approved for use. A third vaccine, Moderna, has been approved for use but will not be in the UK for months.