UPDATE: COVID-19 Vaccinations

As we have previously reported, working alongside the two other surgeries in our Primary Care Network (PCN), North Harbour Medical Group and Kirklands Surgery, we stepped up our COVID-19 vaccination programme just before Christmas.

We are now waiting for further vaccines which are, sadly, in shorter supply than we would like at present which is meaning a delay in being able to book more clinics. We have small amounts of vaccines coming through at the moment and we are vaccinating where we can, in accordance to the Government issued cohort criteria, starting with Care Homes and staff, then on to patients aged 80+ and Health & Social Care workers including front line staff.

We are currently experiencing a lot of calls to the surgery asking when people will receive their vaccine and, the honest answer at the moment is that we can’t give you time scales. We hope that vaccines will become more readily available in the coming weeks as they produce more.

Please rest assured that no-one will be missed and we will make contact with people as their cohort becomes available and vaccinations arrive. We are not just vaccinating our patients, we are vaccinating patients from three surgeries which, for example, gives us over 2,000 80+ to vaccinate. This will take time and the team are working as best they can to get people booked in as and when the vaccine is made available to us.

The national message for the vaccination campaign remains as please don’t contact us about vaccination, we WILL contact you. Calls about vaccinations are blocking our phone lines to patients who need to speak to us for other medical reasons and sadly, are resulting in people being rude to the team here who are working as hard as they can to provide the best service we can at the moment.

Thank you for your understanding and patience and please rest assured we will get to everyone.