Flu and Covid Vaccination Programme 2023

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Invites for covid and flu have gone out. We understand that there were some frustrations when we filled our joint clinic in just over an hour of invites going out, which meant many patients were left unable to book and we can only apologise for this.

Going by the poor take up of the Spring boosters, we were not expecting a huge demand for covid so we concentrated on giving more capacity to flu vaccinations. Despite underestimating the demand, we did respond very quickly to this and released further clinics as quickly as we could. 

Unfortunately with covid, we have less control over stock, so we had to secure this before releasing more appointments. The process of administering covid also takes much longer than flu so we are not able to offer as many appointments. Also, we need to be mindful of waste– covid vaccinations come in a vial with several doses. If we are opening a vial, we need to use all doses in the vial– this means we cannot provide adhoc or opportunistic vaccinating like we can with flu.

All our vaccinators and administrators that help with the flow of traffic at the clinics and data input, are all giving up their own time and working in addition to their usual hours to ensure we can deliver this service. This also limits what capacity we are able to provide. 

Delivering flu and covid vaccinations is an additional service that we can chose to provide. We understand the importance of being able to offer appointments to patients with clinicians they are familiar with, in their surgery, which is easily accessible but we simply cannot deliver covid vaccination to all of our eligible patients because we still need to ensure we can provide all of our other contracted services. 

If you were not able to book in at the surgery for both vaccinations, you can book for your flu vaccination here at the surgery and then contact 119  to book for your covid vaccination at one of the local mass vaccination centres. 

Published: Sep 13, 2023