Covid Vaccination Clinics Commence Tomorrow (7th Jan)

We are really pleased to be providing these clinics to all of our patients over the coming weeks, but as you can imagine it is quite a logistical challenge to deliver to nearly 9000 patients – and that is just our practice! At the moment we can only deliver the vaccine from one location and this is Stockwood Medical Centre who are kindly accommodating patients and staff from 5 practices.

We will have our staff working out of Stockwood providing vaccinations, which means we will have less staff at Birchwood – BUT – this is such a vital vaccination campaign that we want to do this to support you. This is what will hopefully get us back to a normal way of life in time.

Can you help us over the next 6-8 weeks?

We are providing cover tomorrow (Thurs 7th Jan) as well as Saturday and we are awaiting dates for our next delivery.

We will be on reduced staff cover tomorrow so please can you avoid calling us for routine queries until Friday 8th Jan? Naturally, we remain here for urgent clinical needs.

Rearranging Existing Appointments

We are getting less than 7 days notice to set up, staff and deliver clinics which may mean we will have to rearrange appointments at short notice to vaccinate – we trust you understand this is in the absolute best interest of you as our patients in getting the vaccine out to everyone swiftly. Equally, we are really very sorry about any inconvenience this may cause you.

If you are aged over 80 years and have not received a call yet, please do not worry, we are continuing to call over the coming days and we will get to you. Please do not call the practice with vaccination appointment requests as the appointments are by practice recall only, currently.

We have had queries about the efficacy of the vaccination and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has stated :

”using data for those cases observed between day 15 and 21 efficacy was estimated at 89% suggesting short term protection is very high from 14 days post vaccination”*

*Correct at time of publication – please refer to JCVI for further updated information including allergies.

If you have queries about the vaccination the government link below is really helpful.