#MeetTheVaccinators: Essex woman who overcame a needle phobia and trained on an orange
Andrea Adams retained as a vaccinator in Colchester.
Andrea Adams is an Education Officer for Essex Fire and Rescue Service, who retrained as a vaccinator.
“Your phobia doesn’t tend to disappear, but it gets easier."
She’s one of hundreds of people from fire services all around the UK who have helped with the vaccine rollout.
The number of people in Colchester who’ve had their first Covid 19 vaccine is now over 120,000 – around 72% of the population.
Andrea said the first part of the training for new vaccinators is on an orange:
“You had to go and inject an orange. That was your trial period, if you like.
“It goes from a computer, to an orange, to a person. Yeah, it was a weird transition!”
Andrea also had to get over her fear of needles:
“Having a phobia against needles myself, I thought, actually, this is great.
“Because it would help me get over my phobia, and I would be helping the community even more by keeping people safe."
Emergency service workers have helped communities throughout the pandemic. This has been through delivering food parcels, moving equipment to clinics, and administering vaccines.
Andrea added:
"We have played a huge part in Covid. Anything that we could have given back to help the community, to keep everyone safe, we’ve done it.
Having the Vaccine, how far we’ve come, is just such an achievement for the NHS. I feel so proud of being part of it.