‘Very, very quick response’ from local 65-69 year-olds to vaccine offer

By the beginning of next week, almost 1,000 people per day aged 65-69 will be receiving a dose of a Covid-19 vaccination within the bounds of the Southern Health and Social Care Trust, it has been confirmed.
By Adam Morton
Published 29th Jan 2021, 15:48 BST
Updated 29th Jan 2021, 16:02 BST
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Speaking at the Trust’s virtual board meeting in January, the Trust’s Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development, Vivienne Toal, said the process is beginning to “step up”.

At the time of writing, since going live on the evening of Wednesday, January 27, more than 5,000 people aged 65-69 have booked their Covid-19 vaccination appointments online.

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This mean members of the public born between April 1, 1951 and March 31, 1956 are now eligible to book a vaccination slot online.

The Covid 19 vaccine roll-out continues.The Covid 19 vaccine roll-out continues.
The Covid 19 vaccine roll-out continues.

In tandem with this, GPs are still working to vaccinate those over 70.

Speaking about the vaccination process, Ms Toal said: “Our GP colleagues have been working on vaccinating the over 80s group and are starting to vaccinate the over 75s and the over 70s.

“We then, as of today (Thursday, January 28) are offering the vaccine to the population aged 65-69. Last night, the link for the online booking portal went live.

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“The teething problems have been rectified and we are now in a situation where we are taking bookings right through until Monday.

“We are fully booked today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday and the booking system is working its way through the start of next week.

“That is a very, very quick response from that particular age group.”

Ms Toal explained that in order to accommodate demand as quickly as possible the number of slots available will be increasing throughout the weekend.

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“We are increasing the number of slots, we are stepping those up over the weekend, we will be vaccinating in and around 700 each day over the weekend but by Monday, we will be just shy of 1,000 per day in that particular age group.

“On top of that, any care home member of staff who wants to book on can do so, there will be no problem with that and in addition to those groups we will be supporting our GP colleagues for those identified as clinically extremely vulnerable.”

“It is very much a partnership programme with our GP practices with a number of those groups working in parallel.”

Related topics:GP practices