Prof Mike Holmes said:
"As the country battles with a new Covid variant and we see our alert level raised this week, here in York we join the national mission to give more people their booster. The target now is for everyone eligible aged 18 or over to get their booster vaccine by the end of this year.
It’s clear that we need to make an extraordinary effort to achieve this. We’ve done it before and we can do it again. To do this, however, we know there will be other areas that will be challenged. To accelerate the booster programme and bring forward the national target – seven weeks condensed into three, we need to double the number we vaccinate at the moment. This is a huge challenge which requires our already pressured NHS workforce to work even harder.
Here in York we’re planning to do at least 10,000 vaccinations per day.
We’re increasing our capacity at our Askham Bar Vaccination Centre and extending its opening hours to 6am until 10pm, seven days a week.
In addition to this, we will be opening up to four new satellite vaccination clinics in the City which will open from 8am until 8pm from this Wednesday delivering up to 1500 vaccinations at each one per day.
Appointments are bookable only, via nhs.uk.
I’m calling on the people of York to dig deep and help us get this done. We’re looking for volunteers to support us, we need more clinicians to do the jabbing, and most of all, we need people to come forward for their booster dose if they are 18 or over and it is 12 weeks since their second dose.
I’m also asking for people to be patient, kind and respectful. We’re only human and we won’t always get it right.
We’ve delivered around 67,000 booster vaccinations so far at the vaccination centre and 627,000 booster doses in our region, with over 85% of those people who are most vulnerable (cohorts 1 to 4) having already received their booster jab. So, it’s down to the other cohorts to step up to the mark now and do their bit. As with the early calls for people to come and get their first vaccinations, we need to make sure all those people get this vital booster dose to give them the best protection before the New year sets in.
