Canterbury Medical Practice is working collaboratively with New Dover Road Surgery and the University Medical Centre to deliver vaccinations to all our patients and have, to date, delivered just under 4,000 first vaccinations.
Just to give you an update of where we are up to locally:
- Cohort 1 – We have almost completed the vaccinations to Care Home residents and their carers, just a few to go – some were not well when we first visited so had to wait for them to recover.
- Cohort 2 – We have vaccinated over 90% of all our patients over 80 – the rest have declined vaccination or we have been unable to contact them by telephone and they are being sent a letter.
- Cohort 3 – We have vaccinated over 88% or all our patients in the 75-79 age band – the rest have declined or we have been unable to contact them by telephone and they are being sent a letter.
- Cohort 4 – We have just started to vaccinate patients in the 70-74 age band and those in the Clinically Extremely Vulnerable category (previously called Shielding) and will be vaccinating more this weekend and next week. We are also finalising vaccinations to our housebound patients this week and next. This is a large cohort so please bear with us as we work through our invitation lists.
Please be assured that we are vaccinating patients as soon as we get supplies of the vaccines.
We only get a couple of days’ notice of deliveries of vaccines so we are mostly ringing patients to book them in. We sometimes text those for whom we have a mobile number to check if they want a vaccine – asking them to reply REFUSE or CONTACT and we telephone those who reply CONTACT alongside the rest of the patients in the cohort to book the appointments. A mass vaccination site has been set up recently in Folkestone and some people in the top 4 cohorts have been receiving letters to book their first vaccination there if they would prefer.
We are still asking patients not to ring the surgery to make sure patients needing medical attention are still able to get through. Wait and we will contact you to invite you for your vaccination.
Please be aware of circulating scams – texts or emails usually – the NHS will never ask for your bank details or payment for the vaccine, it is free to everyone.