Lakeside Corby patients told more Covid jabs are on their way

Corby s biggest GP surgery has reassured patients that more Covid jabs are on the way to the town after local people said they had had issues getting appointments.

Nationally, supply has stalled several times during the end of February in the early part of March and this has had a knock-on effect at Lakeside.

Yesterday we revealed that Corby had the lowest over-60s vaccination rate in Northamptonshire, with only 80 per cent of the elderly having had their vaccination.Unlike the mass vaccination centres, Local Vaccination Centre’s (LVS’s) being run by GP practices are not able to order vaccine.

Instead, the NHS England team is responsible for managing the supply of vaccine and allocates stock to individual surgeries like Lakeside, taking into account of a number of factors, such as vaccine availability nationally and the number of patients in currently eligible cohorts still to be vaccinated by each practice.

Surgeries have no control or input into the vaccine allocation or ordering process.

A spokeswoman for Lakeside said: "This means that as soon as Lakeside receives notification of the vaccine delivery date, it arranges clinics for the day immediately following delivery and send out invites to eligible patients.

"Lakeside has been told that supplies of Oxford and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines will increase at GP surgeries and LVS’s in the second half of March, so we are expecting March to be our busiest month yet."

The vaccines will be used to give second doses for those who had their first 12 weeks ago, as well as first doses for ‘cohort 6’ (those aged 16 to 64 with underlying health conditions) and ‘cohort 5’ (those aged 65 and over) and, once those cohorts are completed, cohorts 7 and 8.

The spokeswoman added: "We are unable to provide details of quantities and delivery dates, but as soon as Lakeside receives confirmation of delivery dates they will arrange clinics and send out invitations to eligible patients."

Lakeside has managed to vaccinate 50,000 patients in just ten weeks across its four vaccination centres in Corby, Stamford, St Neots and Stanground - more than 12,500 of these being at Corby.