Clinical Update - In house vaccination

You will have seen the update (5^th Jan 2021) that EEAST are preparing to undertake an in-house vaccination program and work was underway to secure the vaccine and begin the process of providing some vaccination clinics throughout the region.

I am pleased to report that last night we were authorised by NHSE to begin vaccinating healthcare workers as part of the regional programme.

It should be stressed that demand is still outweighing supply currently, so all efforts are being made to ensure access to a vaccine programme, utilising both in-house clinics and access to the acute and PCN / CCG sites as well.

Partner organisations such as Basildon, Watford and Queen Elizabeth King's Lynn have already undertaken bookings and vaccinated approximately 200 of our staff with other sites such as Ipswich, Colchester and James Paget coming online for healthcare workers from today as well.

Booking information for the sites will be disseminated through your local teams and updated regularly on the Need To Know vaccine homepage.

The vaccination team will be contacting all our high risk and shielding staff to make you aware of how and where you can access a vaccine if you have not already done so through one of our external partners. We are hoping this will be as early as the afternoon of Friday 8^th with more regional clinics being provided from Monday 11^th subject to supply.

Regional clinic sites and the clinic hub at Melbourn will be releasing the dates and times for all staff to book in to via Evolve. How many staff we can vaccinate will be dependent on how many vaccine doses we are allocated from Public Health England and as soon as we have further allocations of vaccine, we will put more clinics on. It is anticipated that once we can demonstrate both capability and efficiency, our allocation will be increased.

We understand, acknowledge, and appreciate the frustration and anxiety that the pace and perceived equity of access has caused many of you, but we are now in a position to ‘formally’ move on to vaccinating our workforce for which I am very grateful.

More details to follow through your local leads and Need To Know.

Kind regards

Juliet Beal
Director of Nursing, Clinical Quality, and Improvement

This update can be downloaded as a PDF document below.

Published 7th January 2021