Race is on to trace Doncaster pensioners for coronavirus vaccine, reveals top doctor

Dr David Crichton, Doncaster NHS Clinical Commissioning Group chairman, outlined efforts that were being put in place to get the ball rolling to immunise the elderly in the borough.

The Government said earlier this week that they would initially look to vaccinate care home staff and residents, before moving on to protect the over 80s and frontline NHS workers, following the announcement that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had been passed for use by the UK vaccine regulator.

The UK has secured 40 million doses – enough to vaccinate 20 million people and should be rolled out as early as next week.

Dr Crichton addressed the subject on Thursday, at a meeting of the CCG.

At the end of a discussion on the care of older people, he said: “It is never more important than currently.

"The impact Covid 19 has had because of age is the biggest risk factor anyone has if they contract it.

"We are about to set up and try to roll out a vaccination programme, and I just want to tie these things together. They are clearly the priority, and have been identified medically, but we need to try to link with older people and make sure that they feel safe and are able to come forwards to be vaccinated.

"We are hopeful we can have people vaccinated immediately, but we need to quickly get some communications. We need to try to link up the people with the vaccine who need it most.”

Jackie Pederson, the chief officer at the trust also touched on the issue of the vaccine, saying that the jab provided a possible route to taking pressure off other areas of medicine such as waiting lists that had been affected by the pandemic.

Richard Parker, chief executive of Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, had earlier said that the hospital trust’s sites had been preparing in order to get ready for the vaccines and were now in a position to begin programmes as of the start of December.

Parents of seriously ill children have raised concerns that their youngsters are not in the vaccination programme.

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