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Linda Charles-Ozuzu blog post – Delivering Covid-19 Vaccination

Health and care services have risen magnificently to the challenge of Covid-19 here in the North West. The clapping for carers may have ceased but the dedication, hard work, commitment and courage of the staff who have been through so much in the last eight months continues.

Those of us who work behind the scenes in the NHS and social care have perhaps even more admiration for our colleagues who provide direct care than the public, because we know and understand more of what people have been through, how tired they are, and yet how their focus on those who need the care they provide carries them through.

This is why in the North West we see the vaccination programme for Covid-19 as a type of  ‘operation lightswitch’ – the pandemic has been a very long tunnel and it provides us with the hope we all need that we will, in time, see an end to the loss, pain and grief it has caused. However, the vaccination programme will not deliver itself. Collectively we needed to ‘switch on’ that light by putting everything in place to make it work.

Preparations have been underway since the summer to ensure we can safely and effectively deliver a large-scale Covid-19 vaccination programme for when the vaccine became available. When we heard the news that it had been confirmed as safe and effective by the MHRA, I’m delighted to say that here in the North West our collaborative was ready, as requested by the government, to play our part in the biggest vaccination programme this country has ever seen.

As supplies of the vaccine became available to us, our plans were enacted to begin roll out to those groups who the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have decided need it most – those aged 80 and above, care home staff and residents as well as frontline NHS staff.

On Tuesday 9 December, the glimmer of hope that we all needed arrived when people across the country, and indeed across the North West, became the first in the world to receive the new Covid-19 vaccine.

There are many wonderful stories about those who were first in line to receive the vaccine and about the optimism it has brought to so many about being the first steps in the journey.

Amongst them was 81-year-old Royal Preston Hospital volunteer Doreen McKeown who was the first person in the North West to be vaccinated. Doreen, the team at Royal Preston Hospital, and many more like them, were part of a historic day for the NHS, for the country, and for the world too.

The next phase will see GPs and other primary care staff delivering the jab and a number of GP-led primary care networks will begin doing so this week with more practices in more parts of the country joining in on a phased basis during December.

Our ability to roll out the vaccination programme is largely thanks to the extraordinary efforts of so many of us working together, building on our successful record at vaccinating the most vulnerable members of our communities and health and care staff against flu every year. We were well-prepared to meet the vastly greater demands of the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

And we are using everything we already know to make the Covid-19 vaccination programme a success.

This will be a marathon over the coming months, not a sprint. The NHS will keep expanding the programme as we get more vaccine, and potentially other vaccines come available.

The time has come, and we are ready.