Peterborough pharmacy ‘distraught’ over rejection to give Covid vaccine

Halls the Chemist said NHS England has rejected its application to give city residents the jab “for invalid reasons” after submitting plans to convert a former restaurant into a vaccination centre.

Director Shabbir Damani has hit out at the national body which has also come under criticism from the chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee for not utilising pharmacists who are trained at administering vaccines.

Mr Damani said his staff have been working tirelessly over recent weeks to convert the former Beijing Rendevous restaurant in Napier Place, Orton Wistow, into a site where residents can be vaccinated then monitored to make sure they are not suffering any serious side effects.

But despite this he claims NHS England rejected the initial offer of support on Christmas Eve, before ignoring a follow-up offer a short time later.

“The NHS asked which pharmacies are going to step up to do the vaccinations - we said we’d do it. They changed the rules to say we need to do more, but we said we’d do it,” Mr Damani claimed.

“The refusal is because the new facility is not registered. We’ve had it confirmed from the professional body that because it’s an associated premises it doesn’t need to be registered.

“We went back to the NHS on Christmas Eve, an hour later, and said ‘you’ve got this wrong’.

“We’ve not had a response from the NHS since Christmas Eve.

“We said we’re stepping up and ready to go.

“We believe they’ve made the wrong decision and we’re challenging it.”

In a statement, Halls said: “We have been working extremely hard to transform the building into a vaccination centre for Covid-19 since the call from the NHS for community pharmacies to help vaccinate patients as quickly as possible.

“The significant size of the building will easily accommodate the need to monitor and observe the patients for the important 15 minutes after vaccination in a safe and protected area.

“As requested by the NHS we have committed to vaccinating seven days a week, including bank holidays, and extended hours, to maximise the rollout of the vaccine.”

The pharmacist said it has been working with the city council to make sure the premises will be ready for use in the coming days and that other local pharmacists have also pledged their support.

It added that it was “distraught having previously been asked to join the vaccination programme and being refused for invalid reasons”.

City resident Mr Damani has worked as a pharmacist in Peterborough for the past 30 years and said he wants to give back to the city which welcomed his parents here when they arrived from Uganda.

He said: “This is me looking after the community which gave me a home. Peterborough opened its doors to my family.

“We want to vaccinate as many people as possible. We will have to answer to our children and grandchildren about what we did during the pandemic. I want to say ‘I did this’.”

He is now calling for residents to help out as volunteers should the NHS give him the green light to proceed, with people needed to help complete the building preparation and to support his teams with marshalling and administration.

Mr Damani, who said he has received the backing of MP for Peterborough Paul Bristow, is being supported by leader of the city council’s Lib Dem group Cllr Nick Sandford, who said: “Most people in the country want to get behind the Government in tackling and defeating this dreadful virus in all its forms.

“The mass vaccination campaign is the number one method of achieving this, but now we are told NHS England are refusing to allow vaccinations on Sundays and we have reports that pharmacies large and small are offering to help but are being turned away.

“This Government has messed up on the timing of three lockdowns, messed up on finding adequate amounts of PPE and messed up on organising an effective test and trace scheme. They must not be allowed to mess up again.

“I have written to our director of public health asking her to lobby government and NHS England to get these problems sorted out and get the vaccination campaign moving at maximum possible speed.”

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee, Simon Dukes, said: “Rather than scrabbling around trying to find retired GPs and nurses and anyone who has possibly dated skills, you’ve got an army of thousands of pharmacists up and down the country who administer the flu jab every winter.

“We’ve been telling the NHS that we’re ready, willing and desperate to help. But we’ve been met by a de facto silence.”

An NHS East of England spokesperson said: “Pharmacies are already working with GPs to deliver the vaccine in many areas of the country, and as more supply becomes available community pharmacists able to administer large numbers of vaccine will play a role in the NHS’s phased vaccination programme, the biggest in the health service’s history.”

NHS England said criteria pharmacists have to meet in order to be a vaccination site includes being able to deliver more than 1,000 vaccinations a week.

Volunteers can contact Halls the Chemist via its Facebook page or by sending a text or WhatsApp message to 07766 910910.