Support for Shot in the Arm campaign

Politicians from all sides are today backing our Shot in the Arm campaign but this is not a political issue - it’s a matter of life and death.

Vaccination is our answer to this raging pandemic but time is against us. The faster we can vaccinate the population, the quicker we can get the virus under control and return to some semblance of normality. Why not use every available resource to turbo charge the vaccination programme?

With a national army of some 11,000 pharmacies it makes sense to utilise their skills, manpower and abundance to quickly achieve the Government’s target of immunising two million people a week.

Instead of looking to have a jab available within 10 miles, using our pharmacies and GPs it should be within 10 minutes.

All three of our Sunderland MPs agree. As Bridget Phillipson, who represents Houghton and Sunderland South tells us today: “If we want to get Britain vaccinated, the Government needs to step up its efforts to roll out the vaccine.

“That means making use of our pharmacies to deliver the vaccine across our community as quickly as possible, as the Echo has rightly called for.

"This will help us secure our economy, protect the NHS, and rebuild our country.”

They are members of the Labour, but the Conservatives are with us too.

The leader of Sunderland Conservatives, Councillor Antony Mullen, has also backed our Shot in the Arm campaign.

Like we say, this is not about political point-scoring it’s about saving lives.