Drive through vaccination clinic prepares patients for winter
A town's medical practice held its first drive through vaccination clinic on Wednesday to raise awareness of vaccinations during the pandemic.
Dr Jessica Harvey and the team at Much Wenlock and Cressage Medical Practice held the clinic this week to encourage people to get them done safely before winter. They safely administered more than 100 Pneumococcal vaccinations.
"Covid put lots of constraints on us, and limited how we do things like vaccinations," she explained.
"Normally, we would do a clinic where we would probably treat 350 people in the morning session alone, and it would mean a lot of people waiting together. So we obviously needed something that would include social distancing and to make sure its a safe and compliant environment.
"I did some research on drive throughs, they have been used quite a lot in America. The surgery doesn't have a large car park so I got in touch with the William Brookes school and they were amazing actually. They were really kind and generous in helping us.
"Its been really good because we have not done anything with them before, but the headteacher and the campus manager were just brilliant.
"They said we could use their car park as its the holidays at the moment. They even gave us cones and high-vis jackets."
Despite the rain on the day, patients were able to drive through, a member of the administrative team took their details and then staff would administer the vaccination.
Jessica added: "The flu campaign normally starts in November, and we normally start doing vaccinations form September so the sooner we do it the better.
"Everyone is more aware of things like flus and viruses at the moment so if we can maximise the amount of people getting vaccinated it will have a reversed impact hopefully. If we can reduce the burden this winter on the NHS that will be good."
