Praise for 'sterling job' with vaccine effort in Hartlepool

Tees Valley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) heard how to date more than 262,000 doses of the vaccine have been delivered in the region, with the total increasing every day.

Dr Boleslaw Posmyk, a GP working in Hartlepool and Darlington, praised everybody involved in delivering the vaccines, with work increasing as they deliver second doses.

He said: “We’re aware of the issues that are in the public domain in relation to all the concerns in various parts of the world about vaccine and vaccine supplies, but everybody who’s involved in the vaccine process is doing a sterling job.

“There is also increasing provision in mass vaccination centres and pharmacies as well, to increase the capacity of the process, because effectively now we’re delivering almost twice as much as before because we’re doing first doses and second doses.”

Dr Posmyk is chair of the Tees Valley CCG Governing Body, and he was providing the update to the latest meeting of the group on Wednesday, March 24.

Craig Blair, director of commissioning, strategy and delivery at the CCG, said at the meeting although the Tees Valley was previously behind the average in delivering vaccines, there has been significant progress to address this.

He added that in the 75 to 90 age group almost 100% of people are expected to have been covered by the vaccine roll-out.

He said: “The Tees position was slightly behind the national average in terms of the number of vaccines that had been administered.

“What that shows is over the last month there’s been significant progress with the older age groups at least having one dose.”

Jean Golightly, director of nursing and quality, added patient feedback about the vaccination campaign has been ‘outstanding’.

She said: “Each patient you speak to still feels like they’re being treated as an individual.

“They’re very impressed and also they feel very cared for.”

At the meeting Dr Janet Walker, medical director, also advised patients not to telephone their GP practices with questions on vaccinations, as this could prevent others contacting them with urgent health care needs.

She added everybody would be contacted in due course with information on when they would get their vaccination.

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