Dr Linda Charles-Ozuzu, Regional Director of Commissioning for NHS England and NHS Improvement and SRO for the Vaccination Programme in the North West.

In the last 12 months, we have delivered more than 12 million vaccinations to protect the population of the North West against COVID-19.

90.1% of the adult population have had their first dose and 85.5% their second dose. We have also vaccinated 50% of 12 to 17-year-olds and given more than two million boosters.

It is an extraordinary success delivering a mission of vital importance backed up by phenomenal support from across the NHS, national and local government, community organisations, volunteers, other partners and our population, and intensely hard work.

People have been vaccinated in care homes and their own homes, at GP practices, pharmacies, community centres, hospital hubs, vaccination centres, temples, cathedrals, mosques, churches, schools, shopping malls, theatres, football, cricket and rugby grounds, and pop up sites including at their place of work, onboard vaccine buses, vans and in marquees, gazebos, portacabins and car parks, at zoos, music festivals – and the list goes on.

The first of them was Doreen McKeown who, at 7.20am on Monday 8 December 2020, became the first person in the North West and one of the very first in England to have the COVID-19 vaccine.

Doreen, now 82, who had her vaccine at Royal Preston Hospital, says: “The vaccine has been an absolutely marvellous thing. I grabbed the opportunity of a booster dose. I’m all for it.”

A hospital volunteer until very recently, her enthusiasm for the vaccine, and encouragement to others to have it, heralded a wonderful start. After having her first dose she urged others to do the same, saying: “The staff were marvellous, very reassuring – just don’t hesitate, go for it, go for it with both hands.”

And go for it they did. People turned up first in their tens, then hundreds and even thousands as wave after wave of sites in the North West started offering vaccinations.

Some were in tears at the joyful prospect of seeing their families again – perhaps hugging their grandchildren for the first time in the best part of a year or holding a new arrival for the first time. Others were scared of entering a busy vaccination centre and needed to be coaxed in or have special arrangements made for them. Most were straightforwardly delighted to be having the vaccine and about getting back to something like normal life.

And we shared in their delight as, after months of anxiety and often intense loneliness during the first waves of the pandemic, they got their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Rollout to different types of sites was fast and coordinated. On 14 December 2020, just six days after the hospital hubs began, the very first GP practices started vaccinating, with vaccination centres following on 11 January 2021, and pharmacies on 14 January.

Thousands of people came forward to help deliver the vaccine programme –working and retired GPs, nurses, pharmacists, hospital, community and mental health staff, managers, admin experts and other health professionals; people from the hospitality, retail, beauty and entertainment sectors so badly hit by lockdown; our partners in councils large and small, fire services, and in voluntary and community organisations; faith leaders, community champions and people who have the trust of those around them; and extraordinary numbers of volunteers.

All had to be trained, learn their way around the site where they would be working, and form a team with their new colleagues. Thanks to huge amounts of work behind the scenes, it all happened astoundingly quickly and smoothly, with everyone motivated by the common desire to help protect their fellow citizens at this moment of great need.

As we progressed through the age groups, our intense focus on health inequalities, grounded in the COVID-19 Community Risk Reduction Framework we developed after the first wave of the pandemic and our Vaccination Health Inequalities Framework, saw us take rapid action to reach under-served communities. Roving teams – initially provided by general practice, later supplemented by the military – went out to care homes, housebound people, isolated rural communities, and street sleepers and other homeless people.

We developed and shared a Menu of Reasonable Adjustments to allay the anxieties of people with autism and/or a learning disability, people with enduring mental health problems, street sleepers, people – particularly from Black Caribbean, Black African and Pakistani communities – whose uptake was lower and others at higher risk of missing out on the vaccine.

We worked intensively with GPs, hospital doctors and nurses and other local leaders to get out messages in different languages to our diverse communities: knocking on doors, phoning people who had doubts, and posting information online. And we learned more about those communities through the urgent need to keep them safe than we had ever done before – something we will build on for the future, including through our new North West Health Inequalities Hub.

As the months passed, so did the milestones: we successfully offered the vaccine to everyone in cohorts 1-4, then cohorts 1-9, then everyone aged 18+, while always circling back to those who weren’t coming forward to answer their questions and encourage them to take up the offer.

The programme started to become more and more complex, with first, second, third, and booster doses available, and different offers for different groups, depending on their age and clinical need.

We have taken the opportunity presented by the vaccination programme to “make every contact count”, combining vaccinations with other health interventions.

In Lancaster, a primary care network gave people with a learning disability the opportunity to have their annual health check at the same time as their COVID-19 vaccine.

At Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, vaccinators have sensitively explored issues like how obesity increases risk from COVID-19 irrespective of the person’s age. They have also helped to guide patients to support and advice, including for women’s health issues, concerns about mental health and anxiety, and previously undiagnosed high blood pressure.

And in Manchester, the VaccChat campaign equipped businesses, including those like hairdressers, barbers and beauticians who spend time chatting to their customers, with accurate and reliable facts about the vaccine to help counter misinformation circulating online.

It is all part of how we have adapted and responded to help protect our population against COVID-19.

Now, with the recent discovery of the Omicron variant, we are once again being asked to deliver something extraordinary at extraordinary speed. By the end of January, boosters are to be offered to all eligible adults, including severely immunosuppressed people, three months after their second or, for immunosuppressed people, third dose. We are also providing second doses for eligible 12 to 15-year-olds. Another 1.5 million vaccinations in total.

At the same time, we continue to focus intensively on the approximately 10% of adults in the North West who are yet to have a first dose and the further 300,000 who have not yet had their second dose, guided by our detailed action plan which builds on everything we have learned so far.

I want to thank everyone who has played their part in this historic vaccination programme – all those delivering it, organising it, and who have had the vaccine. This great and wonderful work is saving lives and reducing the toll of serious illness and long-term impact on both people who have COVID-19 and their families, friends, colleagues and communities. We always know our work for the NHS is important but it is not always possible for us to see the impact quite as clearly as we can with this programme. Thank you for everything you are doing.