Updates on upcoming vaccine – speeding up!

We have requests asking when we may be able to offer vaccine to patients in their 50’s: we hope within the next 2 weeks as we have been promised a boost in vaccine supply after a “dry” couple of weeks.

This week we are not allowed to go beyong group 5 (aged 65-70) and group 6 (at risk). We are finshing all these groups Wednesday 10 March.

Next week we understand we will be able to use all available vaccine to start to “mop up” groups 7, 8 and 9. (ages 50-65). We will plan to move down ages, sending SMS invites to those aged 64, then 63, then 62 etc. As people confirm or decline a vaccine, we will re-use the slot until all our vaccine allowance is used, or we have completed all the groups.

We expect some people will have booked a vaccine elsewhere, but we hope anyone aged over 50 is likely to get a vaccine offer at Hartland within the next 2 weeks. But we cannot be 100% sure until the vaccine is waiting for collection from Barnstaple, we’ve been left waiting before.

We plan to invite by SMS message to your mobile as follows:

You are invited to have a COVID vaccine at Hartland surgery on <date> at <time>.

To confirm please reply YES.

If you want a call to discuss reply DISCUSS, if you have other arrangements reply OTHER, if you don’t want a vaccine reply NO. You can include more information if you choose, but a short message may be more helpful us.

If you dont respond within 2 hours, we will try to call you later

We hope this will allow us to organise larger numbers of vaccine in a quick and efficient manner.