We have been informed by our local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) that the local programme is aiming to commence as early as next week in Southam. We will of course keep you posted, and will inform any patients as and when they are eligible for the vaccination.

We are asking all patient to still adhere to the national lockdown rules once they have been vaccinated to control to spread of the virus. The vaccination roll out will be in line with the national guidelines and we will start with our over 80’s. Our Care Home and housebound patients will have their vaccines delivered by the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust this is being done as a service separately to the Southam Hub service.

Before the Covid vaccination became available, the government asked the CCGs around the country to provide a Covid vaccination service. The CCGs, in turn, asked their local PCNs whether they wished to take the responsibility for this. If the PCN did not wish to do so, then the CCG would run the vaccination programme themselves. You will know that many of the other local PCNs decided to take responsibility for the programme. However, all the practices in the East PCN had concerns about how they could provide the service. All the practices are small and have limited capacity regarding available staff. Since all the practices needed to be fully on-board with doing it, the East PCN decided to leave the CCG to provide the service. The PCN practices based the decision to ask the CCG to provide the service due to Staffing of the site.

Many of our practices have branch surgeries and if we were to staff a Covid hub then this would mean the temporary closure of our branches and therefore have a great impact on patient care. With Covid itself our staffing levels may be impacted due to pandemic and again our first thoughts were to protect the day to day primary care we deliver. The date of delivery of the vaccine would not be released until 2 days before arrival, during which time batches of 1000 people would need to be invited. This in itself would be a challenge as we are 5 individual small sites and this could mean high vaccine wastage due to the short shelf life of the vaccine. We have not been able to have the contract changed to meet the challenges of a small rural practice populations we have asked

If we were to have an extra cold freezer (at -70oC) we did not have a site with the capacity to house this

A GMC registered doctor (i.e. not retired) must be on site at the “hub” to sign a legal document for each of the patients stating that there were no contraindications to that patient having the vaccination. This is possible when we vaccinate our own practice’s patients, but not possible when we don’t know patients from other practices.

A doctor must sign a document confirming that they are satisfied that the person giving the vaccination is competent and has completed full training to do so. Once again, this is possible for our own practice staff but very difficult with staff from other practices.

This was a very difficult and morale decision and we based it on the safety of all of our patients knowing that keeping our doors open and our dispensary running especially over the winter pressure months was for us paramount but that we also would offer the CCG support in administration to invite our patients in for the vaccine and to also help staff the hubs are also be a channel for those people wishing to volunteer to help.

In some parts of the county, Covid vaccinations have already started. But not in all areas. Not all PCNs are in wave 1. The vaccines are being rolled out to some PCNs ahead of others. Patients of the East PCN will not miss out.

We are asking patients to please not call the surgery to find out about the vaccination programme but to please bear with us and know that they will be invited in very soon.