Medical director says Peterborough’s new mass vaccination hub will treat hundreds a day and urged residents to trust Covid jabs

The medical director overseeing Peterborough’s mass vaccination centres has urged residents to trust the Covid-19 vaccines as the city’s latest hub opened at the Showground.

As of Tuesday (February 16), the East of England Arena is operating both as a Covid-19 testing centre and as a vaccination hub.

Both operations will be run completely separate from each other, with each having their own space on the site and with no crossover of staff.

The Showground has become the third mass vaccination site in the city after the City Care Centre on Thorpe Road and Halls the Chemist in Orton Wistow along with operations at several GP surgeries.

Staff from across Cambridgeshire Community NHS Trust have been redeployed to staff the site, along with staff from other local NHS trusts, clinicians that have come out of retirement, other medical professionals as well as volunteers sourced through the Royal Voluntary Service and St John Ambulance.

The centre has the potential to carry out hundreds of vaccinations each day and at the moment will be offering the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

David Vickers, Medical Director of the Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust, said: “The East of England Arena is a very good site for us. It is a large site, very open plan and it gives capacity for hundreds of vaccinations each day.

“As with all our centres, we are starting off with a small number of people to make sure the site runs smoothly as intended but we will of course look to up the capacity in the coming days.

“Peterborough is one of the areas where the Covid rate remains higher than the national average and that is why we have stepped up our efforts with this site.

“The CCG will continue to look at how we use our centres and remain on the lookout for sites where we can offer the vaccine and for this reason, are always interested to hear from people who feel they can offer their skills.”

Latest figures from February 9 show that Peterborough’s cases per 100,000 has dropped to 281.8 but that is still well above the national figure, which at the time was 158.7.

Dropping figures across both the city and nationally do appear to indicate that the lockdown and vaccination programme are succeeding and Dr Vickers has encouraged people to continue to comply with both despite some concerns about the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab when faced with new variants of the virus.

Dr Vickers added: “We must remember that the vaccine is really good news, they have been shown to offer really good protection.

“It is perhaps a little soon to make definitive claims about specific variants such as the South African one but the Oxford vaccine has still been shown to offer some form of protection against the serious effects of this. Scientists are already working on modifying the vaccine to offer full protection against other variants.

“This is exactly the same as happens with the flu vaccine, every year the formula is adjusted and changed to counter the dominant strains.

“Concerns about variants is not a reason to not be vaccinated though.

“The aim is to reduce community transmission and if we do that then we reduce the chance the virus has to mutate.

“There are clear signs that the current vaccine programme is leading to a reduction in cases and the rollout in Cambridgeshire is going well, with some good uptake.

“There is still some work we need to do though, particularly in BAME communities to get the message out there that the vaccine is safe and effective.”

The continuing vaccine rollout and the staff associated with delivering it is, however, putting a strain on other areas of the NHS, with increased waiting lists for procedures with some non-essential procedures forced to be cancelled or delayed.

Dr Vickers said: “We don’t take these decisions lightly, we are constantly looking at what is essential and we must continue to offer and what we think can be temporarily shut down or paused.

“This and the waiting lists are under constant review.

“We must continue to give priority to the vaccination drive though, we need to bring down the number of people in hospital and only when we do this and community transmission is lowered can we think about getting back to some kind of normal life.

“Hands, face, space and stay at home remain the key messages for everyone, even those that have been vaccinated.

“If we were to accept that following the first dose, there is around 2/3 protection offered then clearly there is still a 1/3 chance you could become infected and you would therefore still need to still need to follow isolation procedures and get a test.”