Coronavirus vaccine: Road to recovery starts right here
The first Covid vaccinations in the county could be administered today, after doses of the vaccine arrived.
Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is understood to have received a special delivery of a batch of the Pfizer vaccination in the early hours of yesterday with senior staff going through the approval and planning stage of who will be first to receive the jab.
The development marks a major point in the battle against Covid.
The government had said that patients aged 80 and above who are already attending hospital as an outpatient, and those who are being discharged home after a hospital stay, are expected to be among the first to receive the jab.
The government has also said that hospitals will begin inviting over 80s in for the vaccine and will work with care home providers to book their staff in to vaccination clinics.
Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) will be the base of the programme in the county initially, after it was one of 50 hospitals across the country selected for the programme.
Other venues in the county could be used as the programme expands and more vaccines become available.
The government has moved to set expectations around the programme, with a spokesman for the Prime Minister saying they expected the "majority" of vulnerable people will be given Covid-19 vaccinations in January and February.
It also emerged today that GP surgeries have also been told to be ready to start staffing GP-led Covid-19 vaccination centres by next Monday.
It comes as Telford & Wrekin Council confirmed it was setting up a rapid test centre at The Place theatre in Oakengates in a bid to keep infection numbers down.
The centre will be used to invite people for the lateral flow tests, which give results in around 30 minutes.
The idea behind the centre is to target people without symptoms who could be spreading the virus without knowing.
SaTH's board will also meet today and discuss a report from its nursing director Hayley Flavell, about a number of Covid 'outbreaks' at ten wards across the two hospital sites – RSH and Princess Royal Hospital Telford.
The report says that an 'action plan' has been put in place to address the situation, but also confirms that some screenings were missed, and some patients were “moved before the screening result was known”.
