MASS VACCINE PLAN:
Aimtoissue 14mjabsfor highpriority groupsby February15
MASS VACCINATION hubs at sites across England – including sports venues and London’s ExCel convention centre – will begin operations next week, Downing Street has confirmed.
Hubs will be set up in London, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Surrey and Stevenage, Number 10 said.
Venues including the Etihad Tennis Centre, in Manchester, and Epsom Racecourse, in Surrey, will be converted into regional centres in an attempt to meet the Government target of vaccinating 14 million people UK- wide by February 15, with Beverley Racecourse tweeting it will also be a hub.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a Westminster briefing that the centres will also include Robertson House, in Stevenage, the Centre for Life, in Newcastle, Ashton Gate Stadium, in Bristol and Millennium Point, in Birmingham.
The centres are expected to be staffed with a combination of NHS staff and volunteers, the spokesman added.
It comes after Yorkshire supermarket chain Morrisons confirmed that car parks at three stores – in Yeovil, Wakefield and Winsford – would host drivethrough vaccinations from Monday, with a further 47 offered to the Government.
Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi admitted yesterday that the target of vaccinating around 14 million people in the highest priority groups – including the elderly, those with clinical needs, care home residents and staff and frontline NHS workers – by February 15 was “stretching”.
There are also concerns about the speed with which vaccines can go through the necessary safety checks to be deployed.
Boris Johnson also faced questions about the bureaucracy which is making it harder for people to volunteer to help deliver the vaccines.
The Government is giving the vaccine to as many priority patients as possible with a second shot after 12 weeks, rather than holding back supplies to offer a booster dose three weeks after the first jab. The World Health Organisation said it would not recommend that approach, instead suggesting the interval between doses should be between three and four weeks.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has said the rollout of coronavirus vaccines to care homes “needs to be stepped up”, as he revealed one in 10 residents and 14 per cent of staff have received a jab. Mr Johnson told the House of Commons he wants the process to be accelerated across England. Elderly residents and their carers are at the top of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s priority list for receiving Covid- 19 vaccines.
The Department of Health and Social Care has said it is aiming for all care home residents to have been offered vaccines by the end of January.
The Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine was first rolled out to care homes in mid- December, at first to seven homes as part of a pilot and then to homes with more than 50 registered beds.
It is expected that approval of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30 will speed up the process as it does not pose the same logistical challenges.
The Independent Care Group, which represents more than 200 providers in North Yorkshire and York, said it is heartening that care homes are a high priority and have been promised the vaccine by the end of the month.
Chairman Mike Padgham said: “But we have had similar promises before and we pray the Government can deliver this time. We need a dose of realism.
“If the Government can deliver the vaccine to homes by the end of January, we want to see them do it swiftly. If they can’t then they must be honest and tell us a realistic timescale.”
Matt Hancock has compared the production of Covid- 19 vaccines to making your own bread. The Health Secretary made the analogy as he said that producing vaccines is a “difficult task”. Speaking in the Commons, Mr Hancock indicated that the amount of vaccine available is the rate- limiting factor in getting people vaccinated.
We pray the Government can deliver. We need a dose of realism. Mike Padgham, chairman of The Independent Care Group.