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Home Canterbury News Article
Health chiefs have expressed their delight at the approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine - and are preparing to immunise thousands more people against Covid.
By the end of tomorrow (Thursday), more than 4,000 Canterbury district residents will have had the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.
But the Oxford vaccine is much easier to store and doctors hope it can be rolled out as easily as flu jabs.
Earlier this year, more than 800 flu vaccines a day were administered at Estuary View Medical Centre in Whistable.
Judith Marsh, who is co-ordinating the roll-out of Covid vaccines in Canterbury, says the approval of the Oxford jab means they can “really increase our vaccination rates”.
The most vulnerable over-80s in the south of Canterbury started receiving the Pfizer vaccine last week, with clinics running up to 6pm on Christmas Eve at Bridge Health Centre.
Almost 1,200 patients of Canterbury Medical Practice, New Dover Road Surgery and The University Medical Centre had the jabs.
Mrs Marsh said: “We are planning more clinics as soon as national delivery schedules are confirmed and patients in other practices in Canterbury will also be contacted hopefully within the next week so we can get a rolling programme underway.
“The patients were amazing, patient and happy to attend in spite of the cold weather. Several had not ventured far from their home all year.
“All our staff were humbled and pleased to be able to support this population and worked tirelessly to make this a success, often working over their core hours to ensure we reached as many as possible with our first batch of vaccines.”
She added: “We are now keen to scale up as needed and our priority this week is to be able to transport this vaccine into our care homes as soon as possible.”
Mrs Marsh reiterated that patients will receive a call inviting them for a vaccine.
Dr John Ribchester, executive partner at Whitstable Medical Practice, says more than 1,100 people received the Pfizer jab at a drive-thru vaccine clinic set up at Estuary View.
But due to the limited number of doses available in each Pfizer batch, this was achieved with just five injectors active for 12 hours on each day.
Dr Ribchester said: “If we’re back to the speed of ordinary winter flu jabs, it would speed up the throughput and mean we can immunise many more patients more quickly.”
He added that today his vaccine team were “immunising all the care homes in Whitstable and we’re taking out the Pfizer vaccine in special flasks to do that”.
“All the residents are getting the vaccine and we’re offering it to the staff who haven’t already had one,” he said
“In Whitstable, we’ve got about 200 residents in care homes. Some of them are bed-bound and house-bound.”
Dr Jeremy Carter, practice partner at Park Surgery in Herne Bay and Herne Bay Primary Care Network clinical director, says the Oxford vaccine “will certainly be easier in terms of logistics”.
He said: “We can do significant numbers through a flu clinic, so we can go very quickly to a model which has a much higher throughput.
“The idea is we’ll get many more people covered, hopefully much more quickly.”
Almost 2,000 patients in Herne Bay were set to have received the Pfizer jab by the end of today.
Matt Hancock said yesterday morning that doses of the Covid vaccines will now be administered 12 weeks apart - rather than after 21 days - significantly speeding up the roll-out.
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