The following is an update from the County Council:
Seven local vaccination services, led by a GP-led Primary Care Network (PCN), will begin to deliver COVID-19 vaccinations next week. The service for Dorchester will be delivered at Clifton Hamden Village Hall for patients registered with Clifton Hampden Surgery, Berinsfield Health Centre, Marcham Road Health Centre and Long Furlong Medical Practice.
Those invited will be patients aged 80 and over. This is in line with the recommendation from the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) with the top two cohorts being the first priority for the vaccine:
- Residents in care homes for older adults and their carers
- All those 80 years of age or over and frontline health and social care workers
It is going to take some time to deliver the vaccine to all in the top two priority groups and GP practices are working through their patient lists as fast as the deliveries allow.
Patients are being asked to wait until they are contacted by their GP practice.
The news last week that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved nationally is exciting and we have had confirmation that deliveries will be received this week in Oxfordshire, increasing the number of patients that can be invited for vaccination.
Dosage interval
There is updated guidance from the JCVI and the four UK Chief Medical Officers on the dose interval for the second dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. It now recommends the second dose of the vaccine should now be scheduled for after three weeks but before 12 weeks after the first dose.
This means that most of those that have already received their first dose and have their second dose scheduled will now be contacted to rearrange their appointment for their second dose, allowing more first vaccinations to be booked over the coming weeks.
Berinsfield Health Centre have confirmed:
‘I am pleased to let you know that we have started to contact patients to book their covid injections in, our clinics will start on Thursday 7th Jan and they will be done at Clifton Hampden Village Hall. We are inviting patients by age, so older patients first then working down our list.’