First patient receives Covid-19 vaccine at Blackpool GP practice

Vulnerable people – mainly the over-80s – in central Blackpool are being invited to the Marton Medical Practice, based at the health centre in Whitegate Drive, for a Pfizer/BioNTech jab regardless of who their usual doctor is.

Those in Lytham and St Annes will be asked to go to the Lytham Primary Care Centre in Victoria Street.

Both practices are getting almost 1,000 jabs at a time, while Blackpool Victoria Hospital, which has been vaccinating inpatients and outpatients, is also offering a limited number of vaccines to local practices.

Jane Scattergood, Lancashire’s vaccination director, said: “We are at the start of what will be the largest vaccination programme in our history and local teams are working hard to put arrangements in place to allow us to start protecting the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Ms Scattergood said the vaccination programme, which she said is the “largest in our history” will be a “marathon, not a sprint”, with over-80s, care home workers, and NHS heroes at higher risk of dying from the disease the first in the queue.

Dr Nikita Kanani, NHS Director of Primary Care, added: “This is the greatest vaccination programme ever undertaken by the NHS and, to help vaccinate people safely we will be working with local communities to deliver it in convenient and familiar settings.

“As a GP I am proud to be part of this huge national effort to protect our patients against the virus and I would urge the public to come forward when they are called up for the vaccine.”

And Prof Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “GPs and our teams are about to embark on an enormous challenge, delivering the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the community whilst also delivering the expanded flu vaccine programme and the usual care and services our patients rely on us for.

“There are also logistical challenges, but general practice has an excellent track record of delivering mass vaccination programmes, and we want to use this experience to help protect people from Covid-19 and start getting life back to normal again.

“Patients will be contacted and invited for vaccination - we would urge them not to contact their practice enquiring about vaccination.

"We will contact them.”

Gerry and Maureen Hughes, 81 and 84, are thought to be the first patients in England to receive the vaccine at a GP surgery.

The couple, from Halesowen, got their jabs yesterday afternoon at the town’s Feldon Lane Surgery.

The first in Blackpool was Brian Marshall, 87, this morning.

While some GPs elsewhere in the country said on social media their deliveries had been pushed back at the last minute – forcing reception staff who spent hours booking in eligible patients to call them again to reschedule – there was no sign of such chaos here.

NHS England said a trial run of vaccinations took eight minutes per patient – excluding a 15-minute post-vaccination observation.

It estimates that four vaccinators can get through 100 patients in 200 minutes at eight minutes per jab – fast enough to vaccinate 975 patients in three

12-hour days.

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