50 hubs poised to hand
HOSPITALS, sports stadiums and leisure centres will be used as vaccine hubs in the coming weeks, it emerged last night.
The Daily Express understands the Army helped to set up seven sites last weekend and are ready to offer further assistance in a huge nationwide mobilisation.
Health authorities are understood to have accelerated plans for the first 50 centres of the 110 to be set up.
The good news comes as a judge has ordered care homes, councils and local hospitals to do more to a llow families to visit residents and patients – a further sign that ramped up testing and the arrival of the vaccine is allowing greater freedoms.
Military planners have been deployed to Government departments, local authorities and health bodies to help roll out the immunisation programme.
Every major city will have a dedicated mass vaccination centre with a further 1,000 smaller sites across England consisting of GP surgeries and pharmacies, among other venues.
The sites already set up include London’s Nightingale Hospital, Surrey’s Epsom racecourse and Manchester’s Tennis and Football Centre. Members of the armed services were also spotted at the Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol, working from first light until after dusk on Monday preparing the site. The stadium will be used as a centre to administer the serum to tens of thousands of people from the city and neighbouring areas of North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
Challenge
Some leisure centres have also been set up as makeshift vaccine depots.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there are 50 hospitals across the UK primed to receive the Pfizer- BioNTech jab and that there would be “three modes of delivery”.
“Fifty hospitals across the country are already set up and waiting to receive the vaccine as soon as it is approved, so that can now happen,” he said.
“Also vaccination centres, which will be big centres where people can go to get vaccinated, they are being set up now.
“There will also be a community rollout, including GPs and pharmacists.
“Now, of course, because of the - 70C storage conditions of this vaccine, they will be able to support this rollout where they have those facilities. But they’ll also be there should the AstraZeneca vaccine be approved because that doesn’t have these cold storage requirements and so is operationally easier to roll out.”
The Government is desperately trying to buy more ultra- low freezers capable of chilling the serum doses down to - 70C – which will extend their shelf life for six months. Pfizer has also created transportation bags – loaded with dry ice – to chill the vaccine loads as they are transported across the globe.
Jesal Doshi, of B Medical Systems, told the Daily Express that the UK will face a “massive” challenge to secure enough freezers and refrigeration units as it tries to administer the Pfizer- BioNTech jab. He warned that there is likely to be a huge surge in demand for such products.
And Alexandre de Juniac, chief executive officer of the International Air Transport Association, said: “This will be the largest and most complex logistical exercise ever. The world is counting on us.”
Meanwhile, Mr Justice Hayden, vice president of the Court of Protection, was asked to rule on the case of a doctor who has not been allowed to see his wife for eight months.
Michelle Davies, 58, has been in hospital and care homes since suffering a brain aneurysm in December 2018. But since restrictions were introduced in March, her husband John, 60, and their son Kane, 33, have not been able to have contact.
Dr Davies, of Leigh, Greater Manchester, said restrictions affected his wife’s mental health and breached her human rights and wanted Wigan Council and Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group to carry out risk assessments. Mr Justice Hayden said: “The time has come for care homes to position themselves in the vanguard of the developing opportunities.”