West Sussex hospital gets first delivery of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine
Sites across the UK will start administering the jab from Monday (January 4th)
A hospital in West Sussex has taken its first shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine ahead of its national rollout on Monday.
The Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath is among the sites which will be offering the vaccine.
Some 530,000 doses of the treatment will be available for roll-out, with vulnerable groups already identified as the priority for immunisation.
The Princess Royal, which is part of the Brighton and Sussex Universital Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH), received its first shipment of the vaccine on Saturday morning (January 2nd).
Dr George Findlay, who is chief medical officer and deputy chief executive both BSUH and the Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the vaccination programme gives NHS staff "more confidence" coming into work:
"We're aiming to vaccinate the most vulnerable people first, that includes our staff, other NHS staff and care home staff as well, so we've been calling them to notify them of a vaccine being available and to book them into slots.
"We've got quite a lot of experience doing this as we started vaccination a few weeks ago in our other hospital in Brighton (the Royal Sussex County Hospital), so we're well-practised in inviting those individuals in for vaccinations and making sure that all the slots are used."
Dr Findlay said the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be kept at normal fridge temperature, is "much easier" to administer when compared with the jab from Pfizer and BioNTech, which needs cold storage of around minus 70C.
More than a million people have already received the first of two jabs of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Second doses of either vaccine will now take place within 12 weeks rather than the 21 days that was initially planned with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, following a change in guidance which aims to accelerate immunisation.
Speaking to Sky News, Dr Findlay said that the BSUH trust would take a little time to review the guidance before pushing ahead with the revised timetable:
"We think that there may be some groups which are extremely vulnerable that we would want to vaccinate in a slightly shorter time period but we recognise that extension to 12 weeks allows us to get the initial vaccine to more people and protect larger parts of the community."
The roll-out will begin after England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty warned vaccine shortages are likely to cause problems for "several months".
He said the UK urgently needs to maximise the number of people who are vaccinated, but added a lack of global supplies will likely hamper efforts to protect the nation in the first part of 2021.
Public Health England (PHE) has said it does not recommend mixing coronavirus vaccines from different suppliers amid fears over the possible shortages.