Sunderland health chief offers reassurance over second covid vaccine dose appointments

Initial guidelines had been for follow up jabs to be delivered within three weeks.

But following a change to Government advice, city health chiefs are now racing to fix new appointments to ensure as many people as possible can get their initial treatment.

“If you’re due a second vaccination next week, the contact centre will contact you and inform you your vaccination has been cancelled, said David Chandler, deputy chief officer and chief financial officer at Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

“You don’t need to do anything, you don’t need to ring your practice or the call centre, the call centre will call you.

“They’re working through a considerable list because we’ve been very successful at doing first jabs, so it’s not something we can do overnight, but we will be contacting every member of the public who has had the first vaccination to cancel the second one.”

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

The latest guidance is that a second jab should now be given within 10 weeks of the first.

However, some in the city are believed to have already had their follow-up dose after it was ‘impossible to get in touch to cancel the second’ after the change in official advice.

“We can understand the sense of frustration,” Chandler added.

“It’s not a local decision, if you asked local GPs I’m sure they would love to give the second vaccinations and they were telling people as they got jabs it’s really important to come back for the second jab.”

About 125,000 people in Sunderland are thought to be in the government’s top 10 priority categories for the vaccine, including health and social care workers.

About two thirds of Sunderland’s care homes workers are believed to have had their first vaccine jab, with the initial vaccination of care home residents expected to be finished by the end of the week.

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