Over 1 million vaccines given in Kent and Medway

A massive thank you to everyone who has been vaccinated and the NHS teams and volunteers making it happen. We’ve now given over 1 million vaccines across Kent and Medway. The official figures up to 4 April are 1,042,455. More than 889,000 of those are first doses.  The number of people receiving the added protection from a second dose is also climbing significantly now we are four months into the vaccine programme.

Our latest data shows we have more than 87% of the top nine priority groups vaccinated with at least one dose. All nine priority groups have now reached 80% or over.

• Cohorts 1-4 (over 70 years, health and care staff, care home residents): 92%
• Cohort 5 (65-69 years): 90%
• Cohort 6 (clinically vulnerable aged 16-64): 81%
• Cohort 7 (60-64 years): 86%
• Cohort 8 (55-59 years): 84%
• Cohort 9 (50-54 years): 80%

AstraZeneca vaccine review

Yesterday, vaccination experts set out some changes to the UK vaccine programme. It follows a review of reports of a very rare condition involving blood clots and unusual bleeding after having the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine.

• In most cases for people aged over 30 or with underlying health conditions that put them at greater risk of severe illness or death from Covid-19 the advice is to continue using the AZ vaccine.
• For people aged 18-30 with no additional risk factors the advice is now to offer an alternative vaccine if available.

The UK vaccination programme has been very successful with more than 30 million people vaccinated and more than 6,000 lives already saved.  

Information for the public was published yesterday, this includes:

• What is the concern?
• Benefits and risks of vaccination
• What to look out for after vaccination
• What you should do next (information for different age/risk groups)

Pop-up vaccination clinic at Thanet Earth

Some 350 employees at Thanet Earth have been vaccinated at a one-day pop-up clinic organised by Margate & Mocketts Wood and CARE Primary Care Networks (PCNs).

Thanet Earth is the UK’s largest single producer of speciality tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers at a 95 hectare site near Birchington. Many of the workers are from Eastern Europe and struggle to access healthcare services due to the language barrier or simply not understanding how the system works.

Dr Muhammad Sohail, who organised the clinic, said: “A lot of the employees at Thanet Earth either don’t have a GP, or they rarely contact their surgery. By visiting them in their workplace, we managed to protect a huge number of eligible people who otherwise wouldn’t have got the vaccine. It was wonderful to see them relax once they saw how quickly and simply we could vaccinate people – there were a lot of happy faces at the end of the day.”

Eastern European communities are amongst the groups with lower uptake of the vaccine and our vaccine equalities group are looking at what more can be done to promote the jab and increase uptake.

Moderna vaccine starts in UK

The third approved Covid-19 vaccine has started to be used in Wales this week. Initial supplies are being rolled out in other parts of the UK in April. At this point we do not have a date for when the first Moderna supplies will be used in Kent and Medway. We continue to use both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines in Kent and Medway. You can read more about the Moderna vaccine here.