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The UK is celebrating the historic start of a mass launch of the new coronavirus vaccine, but in Birmingham we are faced with an uncomfortable wait to find out when we are going to join.
None of the city’s hospital trusts – the largest in the country, Birmingham University Hospitals, and its citywide counterparts, Sandwell and West Birmingham – are included in the first phase of vaccinations that begins tomorrow.
UHB, the trust that manages Queen Elizabeth, Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull Hospitals, was included in an initial list of phase one hospital facility locations chosen for vaccines, along with neighboring Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
However, when a final list of centers was released over the weekend, both were missing.
Walsall and Coventry and Warwickshire University Hospitals did make the list.
As it stands, no residents of Birmingham, Solihull, Sandwell, Wolverhampton, Dudley or Worcestershire are likely to be among the first to receive the vaccine.
Over the weekend and today, we have conducted a series of investigations to establish what is happening at the local level, but we have encountered a wall of silence.
(Image: PA / Public Health England)
Media inquiries to NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care went unheeded over the weekend, and today we were told that an answer to our questions was in preparation.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said at a press conference this morning that a small number of primary care networks led by GPs would also start delivering the vaccine, starting next week. However, he too refused to get carried away if that included Birmingham.
Local NHS organizations, including Birmingham and Solihull CCG and hospital trusts, cannot keep us informed directly under pandemic related media protocols, but instead direct inquiries to the NHS England.
It means our city’s residents, nursing homes, and NHS staff face a frustrating wait to find out when vaccinations will begin.
Batches of the Covid vaccine have started arriving in hospitals across the UK, ready for the first injections tomorrow (Tuesday 8 December), in what has been hailed as the largest and most complex vaccination campaign in the world. history of the country.
In a statement over the weekend, NHS England said the hits would go first to the 50 hospital trusts in the first phase of the launch.
They include Walsall and Coventry.
More hospitals will begin vaccinating “in the coming weeks and months” as the program intensifies, the statement said.
We understand that the Department of Health and Social Assistance has not used the incidence of the coronavirus to decide where to send vaccines for the first time.
Instead, they seek to share access ‘equitably’ across the country rather than focus on hotspot regions like the West Midlands, where infection rates are declining but remain high.
In areas where vaccinations will begin, patients 80 years of age and older who already attend the hospital as outpatients, and those who are being discharged after a hospital stay, will be among the first to receive the vaccine that they receive. saved the life.
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Hospitals will also begin inviting more than 80 people to get a shot and will work with home care providers to reserve their staff at vaccination clinics.
All citations that are not used for these groups will be used for healthcare workers who are at higher risk of serious illness from covid. All those vaccinated will need a booster dose 21 days later.
(Image: PA)
Birmingham has been severely affected by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, a situation exacerbated by the high proportion of residents of black and Asian origin, whose research studies have shown that they are at increased risk of the worst impacts of the virus.
UHB hospitals have seen the most coronavirus deaths of any trusted hospital in the country, in part because it is also the largest, with its death toll now at 1,401.
In neighboring Sandwell and West Birmingham, the death toll at the Covid hospital is 589.
Mayor Andy Street, when asked on Friday about local vaccination plans and how many vaccines were destined for the region, said he was aware of how many vaccines were coming to the region, but said he felt it was the responsibility of the NHS to respond.
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