Celebration at Newbury Vaccination Centre as 20,000th jab administered

Hub also lays out plan for vaccinating next cohort

Another huge milestone was reached at Newbury Vaccination Centre this morning (Friday) as the hub announced it had administered its 20,000th vaccination.

The news comes just 19 days after the centre announced it had completed 10,000 jabs.

In a Facebook post, the centre – based at Newbury Racecourse – said: “This morning we administered our 20,000th vaccination!

“We are so proud of this milestone which we have achieved in just six weeks.

“A massive thank you is owed to all the clinical staff and admin staff in the nine practices, our army of volunteers, local businesses and community groups and all our patients for their support so far.”

The centre said it was now vaccinating patients aged 16 to 64 who have certain long-term conditions and adult carers (JCVI cohort six.)

It said: “This is a large group of around 11,000 patients so we will be focusing on this group for the next few weeks.

“We also have more carers coming forward to register so this group is expanding.

“For more information please see our previous posts regarding carers and cohort six.

“If you are one of these patients and you haven’t heard yet, please try to bear with us.

“All our teams understand how important it is to you to receive your vaccination as soon as possible.

“We will book you in as soon as we can over the coming weeks.

“In terms of prioritisation, in the absence of any other instructions we are using a combination of clinical judgement and working by age (oldest to youngest), calling in eligible members of the same household at the same time to avoid duplicate journeys.”

The centre said any spare vaccines that come available at short notice, such as if someone cancels their appointment, would be allocated to a reserve list and are not offered to anyone who just turns up.

Only the nine practices operating from the centre can add a patient to the reserve list, and the patient must be within one of the groups eligible at that time for a vaccination.

This, the centre says, ensures no vaccines are wasted and maximises opportunities to vaccinate patients in the eligible cohorts and get through the vaccination programme as quickly as possible.

The centre went on to say that a lack of supply had affected the speed of the roll-out, but it was doing all it could to administers the supply it does have as quickly as possible.

It added: “Nationally there has been a slowdown in the vaccination programme which is shown on the Government’s dashboard here – https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations.

“We currently have no control over our supplies – we get sent what we get sent and we use it as quickly as possible.

“Our understanding is that supplies will pick up again in the next few weeks and we are ready and willing to meet the challenge when they arrive.

“Thank you for your ongoing interest and support.”