Irregular deliveries slow down Covid jabs

IRREGULAR supplies of vaccines are slowing the efforts to roll out the jabs across the city and county.

Professor Aruna Garcea, a Leicester GP representing the NHS clinical commissioning groups, said at a meeting yesterday that GPs would be able to vaccinate people faster if they had more doses.

But right now, appointments cannot be arranged as GPs do not know when more doses will arrive.

Prof Garcea said: “At the moment, the delivery of the vaccination programme is being dictated pretty much by the delivery of the vaccine, rather than the GPs being able to give it.

“Until we can be more satisfied by the government that we have a regular supply of the vaccinations, which isn’t the case at the moment, we can’t say that it will definitely be on a more regular basis.

“We are responding and making an appointment as soon as we know we are getting the vaccinations.

“With the second vaccine (Oxford Astra-Zeneca) we are hopeful we will have a more regular supply, but at the moment we are prioritising care homes and vaccinating high-risk cohorts.”

The Prime Minister hinted that there had been some issues with supply when he addressed the nation this week, something that has been reflected locally.

It has now emerged that issues with the storage and short usage window for the Pfizer-BioNTech jab were to blame for some county sites not operating on some days over the Christmas and new year period.

Responding to reports that some vaccination centres have been closed, Prof Garcea explained: “The Pfizer vaccination has to be given within a very certain timeframe so it’s not necessarily that vaccine centres have closed, instead we’ve put more staff on to give the vaccine as soon as we get it and within the timeframe.

“We haven’t yet had a promise of a delivery that hasn’t materialised, it’s more about the fact that deliveries are irregular so we can’t say we are going to get a delivery on Monday and every Monday thereafter, we don’t know when we are getting deliveries.

“Next week, certain sites will be getting a double delivery - it feels like when central government get the supply they push them out quickly, but I think that might from a patient’s point of view feel that it’s not quite predictable.”