Minutes:
Sarah Carter, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group, gave an update on the Covid-10 Vaccination Plan. She highlighted the following information:
a) 95% of older adults living in care homes have been vaccinated.
b) As at 24 January, 95,000 vaccinations have been delivered.
c) There has been a significant improvement in uptake by those aged over 80 years, although some population groups have lower uptake than others. The Integrated Care Partnership is reviewing local data to identify groups with lower uptake to identify how this can be addressed. Work is taking place with local faith leaders groups and in areas of high deprivation to encourage and support people to book appointments. Establishing ‘pop up’ sites and using GPs and pharmacies is being explored to try and provide hyper local solutions for particular population groups.
d) Local letters have gone out to those aged over 75 years inviting them to book a vaccination appointment and appointments are now bookable.
e) People aged over 70 years should get their local letter tomorrow and the online booking link will be shared. National letters are going out to this cohort on Friday.
f) Letters are being sent out to housebound individuals with details of the roving service that can visit their house and transport to vaccination sites.
g) The key messages are:
i. The NHS is confident that vaccination is very safe and highly effective. Vaccines are highly regulated products.
ii. Evidence shows that the vaccine is effective for black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.
iii. Neither of the vaccines currently used contain any animal products.
iv. Vaccination appointments are available seven days a week into the evening and transport is available to take people to appointments if necessary.
v. Everyone’s support is needed to improve uptake. If people have elderly relatives they can help them to book and attend appointments. Trusted community leaders are needed to help target messages towards specific communities and help is also needed to counter non-evidence based and non-scientific anti-vaccination messages. Any ideas on how to improve uptake are welcome.
vi. Vaccinations are only available from the NHS and are free. The NHS will contact individuals when it is their turn to book a vaccination appointment.
During the subsequent discussion the following points were made:
h) Nottinghamshire County Council Customer Support Line can answer questions about the vaccination process, including booking transport.
i) It was suggested that community leaders could be recorded receiving their vaccination for circulation. Medics and nurses have been recorded but it would be good to broaden this out.
j) It would be helpful to have regular published data on the number of vaccinations to help build confidence in the programme.
k) There is sufficient capacity in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The Forest Fields site is extremely well used and capacity will look to be uplifted in response to demand.
l) A hyper vaccination site has opened in Derby and people living 30-40 minutes drive away from this site will be sent a national letter inviting them to book a vaccination at this site. However, people will always get a local letter as well so they can choose to go to a local site if they prefer. Some Board members raised concern about the potential for people to be confused by getting both national and local letters inviting them to book an appointment and it would be helpful to have clear messaging about why people get two different letters.
m) Information about vaccinations needs to be translated for people who don’t speak or read English as a first language and there is also a significant proportion of people in the City with low literacy rates and their needs need to be taken into account.