Virus vaccine offer remains evergreen

Royal Borough: Demand falls but jab protection is still available

Vaccine centres in the Royal Borough are operating at reduced hours as fewer people come forward to get their COVID19 jabs.

Speaking at a meeting of the Royal Borough’s outbreak engagement board on Monday, NHS representative Caroline Farrar, managing director for the Frimley Collaborative, said that things had been ‘relatively quiet for some weeks’ for the vaccination programme.

She added: “We had the big push in December, and we were successfully vaccinating thousands of people a day, but unfortunately people are not coming forward for boosters at the same rate now.

“So sites have reduced their opening hours because it’s not economical to keep them open if there are not enough people coming forward for vaccinations.”

Encouraging people to come forward for boosters, Caroline said: “It is really important to maintain our protection and support the wider reopening of society.

“It’s the key main plank in our strategy that we are taking as a country and so that is really important.”

According to data provided at the meeting, about 65 per cent of people in the borough received their booster jab between December 8, 2021 to February 6.

Caroline added that it is an ‘evergreen offer’ and urged those who have not had their first, second or third dose to come forward.

Providing an update on the COVID-19 situation at the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, Caroline explained that the trust remains in a ‘steady state’, but added it was a ‘steady but difficult state’.

She added that on Friday, 164 patients tested positive for COVID-19 in the trust, and there have been 20 deaths in the past week.

“That number has been increasing, so although the number of COVID-19 patients is declining there are more deaths,” Caroline said.

She added that there are two positive COVID19 cases in the intensive treatment unit and there were 14 outbreaks of the virus on wards last week.

Currently, 134 staff are off sick with COVID-19 and 49 are in isolation, she explained.

Caroline added this is continuing to impact upon the care the trust can provide, with planned operations having to be cancelled in recent weeks due to the amount of ‘staff sickness and the lack of beds due to outbreaks within the trust’.

Cllr Stuart Carroll

(Con, Boyn Hill) asked Marc Connor, strategy intelligence officer for COVID-19 for the Royal Borough, whether there was any correlation between higher COVID-19 cases and vaccination status.

Mr Connor said there was a correlation, adding that areas with lower vaccination rates tend to have higher case rates.

Cllr Carroll said: “That’s really quite telling.

“Again [a] critical public health message – get vaccinated, the likelihood of getting COVID significantly reduces.”