4,000 vaccinations at the Jericho Health Centre

The Jericho Health Centre has now vaccinated around 4,000 people in the first four priority groups, and with very few refusals. Dr Helen Salisbury of the Observatory Medical Practice says: “We had also started vaccinating people in Group Five – aged 65 and over. But we have now been asked to move on to Group Six which is those adults aged 16 to 65 who are at risk. Those in Group Five are now being invited to go the Kassam Stadium.” 

The Jericho Health Centre is certainly more convenient and has been the location for vaccinations for five local practices – the Observatory and Leaver practices, which are based at the Jericho Health Centre, as well as the practices at 27 and 28 Beaumont street, and at King Edward St. Another primary care network covers the practice at 19 Beaumont street and in Summertown and Banbury Road, for which vaccinations take place at Cherwell School. 

Dr Salisbury says: “Getting vaccinations at the Jericho Health Centre has been very good for our patients and I hope we will be able to continue vaccinating other groups there later.” So if you are in the 65 to 70 group and prefer to hang on you might still be able to get your jab locally. 

Vaccinations started in mid-December for the over-80s using the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. At that stage, people were told they would be coming back in three weeks. After the Government advice was to extend the period to 12 weeks to cover more people, the Centre chose to fulfil its three-week promise to the original group, but those who received the Pfizer vaccine later will get their second dose after 11 or 12 weeks. This is on the advice of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. 

Dr Salisbury says: “If the vaccine works like others, we will be better of reducing the overall load of the pandemic and getting the viral numbers down by vaccinating lots of people partially than vaccinating fewer people more thoroughly. That seems to make sense to me. But I hope we will get some data soon on how many people who had the Pfizer vaccine got COVID after say six weeks.” For the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, however, the data already show that it works best with a 12-week delay.

First dose, second dose, and multiple groups. How are they keeping tabs on all these people? Not, you will be relieved to hear, on Excel spreadsheets. The Centre is using the NHS Pinnacle software which is web-based and linked to a national database. The Centre can also now invite people by text message which enables the appointments to be confirmed more quickly. But for those who cannot be reached in this way, they will continue to use phone calls or letters. Dr Salisbury says: “It is quite a big piece of work to make sure everyone gets the right vaccine on time.”

“We did 500 last Saturday and will do another 500 this Thursday. And next week we have another batch of Pfizer coming. This comes in a tray of 1,170 doses. We have to use it all within three and a half days, which is more of a performance. The Oxford one you can leave it the fridge, so if some people do not turn up that is not such a big deal. And it does not need recipients to sit down and wait for 20 minutes before they leave, so we can use the walk-through mode.” 

If people all have appointments for their vaccinations, why are there sometimes long queues? Because most people are so eager to get vaccinated they turn up very early.

--------------------------------------------------------

You can also see the My Jericho interview with Dr Salisbury on January 27 by clicking here.