Patients urged to avoid GP's to book booster
GPs across York and North Yorkshire will only focus on urgent needs and vaccinations for the next few weeks
There are fears GPs across York and North Yorkshire are being pushed to the limit as the government aims to get all adults vaccinated within the next few weeks
Boris Johnson announced he wants to get one million people jabbed a day in the wake of the Omicron variant
Dr Nigel Wells is Chair of NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group – he’s urging people to be kind to staff. He said:
“We need to boost everybody as soon as possible and we will do that but it will mean that we need to be kind and compassionate to people as we get through this so that we can maybe put their care and treatment to another time.
“It's going to be very hard work and it's going to mean a lot of people are working very long hours and people are not going to have the breaks they thought they were going to have but we know from public health that this the way that we need to go.
Dr Wells is encouraging people to stay away from practices and to book their booster jab online.
It comes as GPs will only focus on urgent needs and vaccinations for the next few weeks.
Nigel added:
“My advice would be don’t go to your GP to book your booster jab. Go online to do that those sites are opening up this week to book your boosters the other thing you can do is phone 119 if you wanted to book boosters you got remember the 119 will also help you with anything covered related.
“It’s a big logistical challenge but we were looking at this anyway because the promise was by the end of January anyway we brought this forward government by four weeks. It’s now how we could really prioritise getting the boosters out in this next three week. So everybody's got an offer.”