Covid-19 Vaccination Centre

Medway Peninsula Primary Care Network - Wainscott Surgery Vaccination Centre

Latest Update 03/02/2021

The vaccination centre at Wainscott surgery is now into its 7thconsecutive day of delivering Covid vaccinations to patients registered with Highparks Medical Practice, The Elms Medical Practice and St Werburgh Medical Practice. Practices are providing teams to ensure the service operates from 8.00am to 8.00pm seven days a week.

The site has delivered approx. 1600 vaccines so far to patients in groups 1-4 of the government's priority list. We are working closely with Medway Clinical Commissioning Group to ensure we achieve the government's target of offering vaccinations to all patients in groups 1-4 by the 15th February 2021.

The PCN is now working towards setting up a limited vaccine service from a site in Allhallows on the peninsula to help manage travel inequalities to a vaccination site. It is our aim to have this site up and running on Friday 5thFeb 2021 and it will operate Monday to Friday until further notice.

In addition to the new site the PCN is also working with our community services colleagues (Medway Community Health) who have been commissioned to carry out all covid vaccinations to housebound patients in Medway. We have submitted validated lists of housebound patients and we are now awaiting further instructions but we anticipate this service to begin imminently. If patients are currently housebound and they have not been contacted they should contact their GP practice after 11am (to avoid the morning rush) to ensure they are recorded and scheduled for a visit.

As you can appreciate running an additional service places extra demands on our GP practices. This will have an impact on the day to day services that it can provide so please be aware that there will be a reduced number of GPs and particularly nurses working at GP practices whilst the vaccination centre is running. Despite this, all practices will continue to offer a wide range of priority services but just not the same quantity as they could before.

It is difficult to list all of component parts that make up a vaccination centre in a newsletter and it's equally hard to list all those involved who we wish to thank who have supported us to get to where we are today. Please see some special thankyous below:

  • A huge thank you to our band of volunteers who help us manage the car park and traffic into and out of the centre. The deputy chair of Highparks Medical Practice Patient Participation (Mrs Cavender) has taken on the role of co-ordinating this mammoth task. Our volunteers are outside in the cold and rain providing an outstanding job in what some thought an impossible site. Thank you.
  • Thank you to our clinical and administrative team that make up the necessary shifts to carry out the vaccinations, they are amazing. They have worked tirelessly throughout but still manage to smile and make the centre a pleasant experience for our patients. Behind the scenes our support team ensure the site is clean, well equipped and help coordinate all of the component parts of the centre so it can continue with this momentum for the foreseeable future.
  • The cleaner at wainscot needs a special mention as she has ensured that the site is spotless daily. It must be extremely hard to clean especially with the recent weather and volume of patients who pass through the site each day. Thank you.
  • The GP practices and their staff who are not involved in the centre are also working extremely hard and deserve recognition at this time. They continue to book patients into clinics, take queries and ensure that all the day to day business of a practice continues. (prescriptions, referrals, appointments etc).
  • Our final thankyou goes to our wonderful patients. They have made all the hard work worthwhile. They have arrived for their appointments, battled the weather and have brought joy to all those who are involved, thank you.

In terms of what's next, your practices are working through their lists of patients and continuing to invite patients who are over 70 and or clinically extremely vulnerable. The PCN anticipates that we will meet the government's 15th Feb target if we continue at this pace.

Patients are reminded that when they come to Wainscott Surgery for their vaccine please remember to bring along their nhs numbers if they have one (printer on your prescription) and if you are on warfarin please also bring along your yellow book.

Finally, it is likely that the PCN we will need to continue to provide the vaccination centre at Wainscott surgery for some time to come. To do so we may need additional support so we would welcome clinical and non-clinical volunteers who have any spare time to donate to the vaccination centre. If you would like to volunteer please submit offers either through the site post box or your local GP practice and we will contact you for further arrangements.