Hundreds of Royal Stoke patients start to receive COVID-19 vaccine
Hundreds of patients at the Royal Stoke Hospital will today start to get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Last updated 16th Dec 2020
The hospital has taken delivery of 975 doses of the Pfizer - Biontech vaccine in the last few days, enough to vaccinate just fewer than 500 people.
The first to get it will be patients over the age of 80 who are about to be discharged, some inpatients, care home workers and 'high-risk' clinical staff.
They'll need two doeses of the vaccine, 3 weeks apart, before they are fully protected.
There are limitations on how many vaccines can be distributed due to the 'cold chain requirements' of the Pfizer vaccine i.e it must be kept at below -70 degrees Celcius.
However, it's expected the number of weekly vaccinations will slowly increase over the next few weeks and then potentially start to increase rapidly after Christmas.
Dr Paddy Hannigan, who's in charge of the vaccination program across Staffordshire said: "To have a vaccine that's gone from not even being thought about to actually deliverable in this time scale is a huge achievement. It's so gratifying to see that we have managed to do it at this pace."
"This is really exciting, the last nine months have been a very difficult time for anybody working in the NHS and the entire population of this country. Not only the impact on human life but also what it's done to peoples employment and their business. Hopefully this means that can be a once in a lifetime experience"
It thought mass vaccination could start next year once the cheaper and easier to distrabute 'Oxford AstraZeneca' is approved. As of yet, it is still waiting for approval from the Medical and Healthcare Products Regulator.
Staffordshire will get 3 mass vaccination sites capable of doing 1,000's per day
Dr Richard Harling, Director of Health and Care for Staffordshire County Council said:
"The NHS will be vaccinating through three strands. The first being hospitals themselves where the vaccine will be available."
"The second will be a small number of mass vaccination centres which will do thousands of vaccinations per day. We understand that there will be three of those across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent."
"Finally there will be smaller, more local vaccination sites and it looks like there will be around 20 to 25 of those across the county."