7,000 doses of new vaccine on their way
Just over 6,000 coronavirus vaccines have been administered across Lincolnshire since December 8, less than 1% of the national total.
Dr Kieran Sharrock, medical director for Lincolnshire’s Local Medical Committee told BBC Radio Lincolnshire the figure for the Pfizer vaccine is from last week, and that more people had been vaccinated over the weekend.
More than 7,000 extra doses of the new Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are being delivered to GP surgeries across the county in the coming week.
Vaccinations started in the county’s hospitals on December 8 and was soon followed by GP practices in Louth, Grantham and other locations around the county.
Care home residents, staff, people aged over 80 and NHS workers are at the front of the queue for the vaccine.
Dr Sharrock said the vaccine would “start to make a difference pretty quickly” with cases, and hopefully restrictions, dropping and businesses being able to return to normal.
He said the new Oxford vaccine would be “much easier to transport and deliver” and will mean health workers could travel to care homes or housebound patients.
There were some concerns about the recent decision to delay the second dose of the vaccine in order to increase the number of people who were given their first, he said.
However, he added: “Obviously, the experts have done the sums, looked at the science and realised that actually we need to get the number of cases down.
“If by giving the first dose to more people we get the number of cases down, that means we can get out of lockdown sooner and actually stop people dying.”
NHS England, the national body in charge of the vaccination programme, has been reluctant to confirm figures at a local level.
However, the government’s dashboard says that 944,539 people have so far received their first dose of vaccine across the United Kingdom, of which 786,000 were in England.
The first patient to receive the Oxford vaccine in the UK was 82-year-old Brian Pinker and more than 500,000 doses are ready to go nationally.
He follows in the footsteps of other COVID vaccine pioneers such as 90-year-old Margaret Keenan and 81-year-old William Shakespear.
84-year-old retired NHS worker Janet Judson, from Lincoln, was the first in Lincolnshire to receive the Pfizer vaccine.
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