REVEALED: SSE to stay open as mass vaccination site until September

Downtown Cool FM can exclusively reveal the SSE mass vaccination site will remain open for Coronavirus vaccines until September.

The live events venue was transformed on March, 29 as part of the Covid-19 fightback.

The concert arena can administer up to 40,000 jabs a week and on Friday it celebrated a milestone 200,000th vaccine.

Initially it planned to run until August, but speaking to Downtown Cool FM, Patricia Donnelly who runs the vaccination programme in NI, revealed that has been extended:

"It's actually going beyond that and we have to thank the SSE senior managerial team for extending the license, it's been highly successful, they've stated their commitment to this and the minister has thanked them personally for that."

The transformation of the venue was described by Health Minister Robin Swann 'as a monumental step in the population wide vaccination programme' and the SSE Arena is the biggest mass vaccination site in Northern Ireland.

Run by the South Eastern Trust first doses were administered at the Ulster Hospital vaccination site before the arena opened in the spring.

Mrs Donnelly said it has been a smooth transition:

"The SSE as you know started at a time when the other vaccination centres were doing a lot of second doses, so the arena in itself does nearly the same amount of vaccinations as all of the other vaccination centres put together, so it's a big enterprise.

"The Trust vaccination centres will run until the middle of September, the SSE had a contract that was stopping earlier than that but we have now agreed that that will also push on until the end of September."

Every UK adult was promised a first dose of a coronavirus jab by July as part of the government's commitment to the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

Northern Ireland is now entering the final phase and Mrs Donnelly said slots for first doses will cease to be available soon.

She is urging everyone who has not yet got a vaccine to book without delay:

"You'll realise that if you're having your second doses in August and September you will have had your first dose in July so we are encouraging people to come forward this month and next month because there will come a point that there will be no more first doses and we'll start to be talking more openly about when that is likely to be."

As part of the fight against Covid-19 booster jabs are expected to be made available alongside the winter flu vaccination programme.

We asked Mrs Donnelly how the rollout will work:

"The Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation are the ones who give the advice on this and we know they have recommended a booster dose.

"What they haven't said is who should be vaccinated, what vaccine should be used, over what time period.

"We expect it to be the autumn or the winter, we expect it to be a single dose but we don't know which vaccine and we don't know which group but we await their advice we hope it'll be with us by early July to give us time to plan that."