Antiques fair caused long delays at Peterborough vaccination centre

The Festival of Antiques is one of the biggest events of its type in the country, and large crowds gathered for the event.

However, one of Peterborough’s vaccination hubs is also based at the arena, and people attending the site to receive their jabs faced long traffic jams to attend their appointment, making them late for their scheduled slot.

One person who was attending for their first jab said they had to wait for more than 45 minutes in the jam - with no communication from any marshals about the delays.

While the traffic queues to access the site had disappeared on Sunday, appointments were running more than 40 minutes behind schedule at times.

Venue director, Jason Lunn said: “People attending Covid 19 vaccination appointments at the NHS Vaccination Centre at East of England Arena over the weekend may have had to endure some delays as we began the work of restarting events at our venue and admitting visitors again.

“While we appreciate this may cause some difficulties to the vaccine centre and the events taking place on site, this short term disruption is a small price to pay to keep vaccinations going and be able to reopen our business. We felt it would be wrong to close the vaccination centre, although it would have prevented the queues and delays, and remain determined to keep it open throughout all our events this year.

“Now that the initial morning rush has passed, we’re happy to confirm the NHS vaccination centre is now running normally again. The next date we anticipate any issues will be in June, and if there are ways to minimise disruption, we will find them after looking carefully at today’s events.”