Every care home resident in Sunderland expected to get covid vaccine by the end of the week

Health chiefs have predicted everyone living in a city care facility will have been given their first jab within days.

Good progress is also being made with care workers, although it is expected to be next week before all of Wearside’s vaccination sites are up and running.

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And vulnerable families who are housebound but not living in care homes also face a wait.

“If you’re over 80 and housebound, someone will come and see you to administer the Oxford vaccine, rather than asking you to come to a hub,” said David Chandler, deputy chief officer and chief financial officer at Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

“We’ve now been given approval to use some of the Pfizer vaccines in care homes and we’re hopeful that by the end of next week all care home residents will have been vaccinated.

“We’ve got a team working on that across the city.

“Community staff in health and social care, a large number now have been vaccinated, especially care home staff – at the last count we had done about two thirds of the care home staff, about 1,600.”

Chandler was speaking at a meeting of Sunderland City Council’s Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee on January 6, which was held by videolink and broadcast via YouTube.

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About 125,000 people in Sunderland are thought to be in the government’s top 10 priority categories for the vaccine, of whom about 14,000 are over 80.

Wearside’s GP practices are split into six Primary Care Networks (PCNs) covering the whole city, each with its own vaccination centre and all of which have now received vaccine deliveries.

Of these, PCNs for Grindon, Bunny Hill, Houghton and Washington have started administering jabs, with Riverview set to start tomorrow (Friday, January 8), followed by Millfield on Wednesday (January 13).

Chandler added: “PCNs and practices are primed to deliver up to 19,000 doses every week.

“The only limiting factor is vaccine delivery.

“In Sunderland we’ve never turned down a vaccine offer, every box we’ve been offered we’ve accepted.

“At the moment we’re not getting those volumes through yet, but I’m sure things will ramp up in the near future.”

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