Interesting HSJ Article19 Nov 2020 13:50
(Part 1)
The health service is setting up more than 40 mass vaccination centres, and working on recruiting tens of thousands of staff for the huge covid-19 vaccination effort, HSJ has learned.
NHS England has told local leaders that each of the 42 health and care systems in England should have at least one mass vaccination site, with two expected for some larger systems, according to several senior sources.
They will typically be run by “lead providers”, which will be contracted by NHSE to cover each part of England — mostly expected to be NHS trusts which provide community services. They are likely to be in conference centres and similar venues; there have been discussions about co-locating them with covid test centres.
These will be in addition to smaller GP-run vaccine centres, for which locations are due to be confirmed early next week, starting with one in each of around 1,000 primary care networks. It is expected the mass centres will start work a little later than the GP practices, and are more likely to vaccinate groups which are not at the top of the nationally-set priority list.
NHSE has not yet made clear whether, next year when wider groups are eligible for vaccination, people will be able to self-book and/or choose where to receive their vaccine.
Meanwhile work is beginning on recruiting large numbers of staff for the huge covid-19 vaccination effort. HSJ understands it is estimated that 6,000 staff will be needed in the South East region and 5,000 in London — suggesting around 30,000 to 40,000 across England.
A national campaign to begin recruiting the staff is expected to be launched, in addition to local recruitment drives focused on attracting retired health professionals, volunteers, and others.
The additional staff are also expected to be employed by local contracted “lead providers” on a national model employment contract. Substantial input will also be required from the existing workforce, especially for community services staff.
These providers will also organise the logistics of the programme in their area. It is not clear if there will be exactly one lead provider per ICS.
An online webinar run by NHS England this week said many of the vaccination staff will be “inexperienced” and will be trained using a two-hour e-learning training programme being developed by Public Health England. It said it is also in discussions with St John’s Ambulance service to help with delivery.
Successful early trials for the new covid vaccine have been run by a small number of research teams, including those led by Astra Zeneca and Pfizer, and they are confident of gaining approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
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