Don’t call us, we’ll call you: GPs tell patients to wait to find out about vaccine appointment
GP surgeries in England are urging patients not to ring up to enquire about vaccination appointments, insisting that invitations will be sent out to eligible recipients instead.
Health authorities have begun planning how and when to deliver supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine across the country, after the UK’s drug regulator approved the jab for emergency use on Wednesday.
Because of the logistical challenges involved in storing and transporting the vaccine, the first doses are set to be delivered to hospitals and mass vaccination sites with sub-zero freezing capacity, before being shared among local GPs and care homes.
More than 50 hospitals in England are already set up and ready to receive supplies, while authorities are waiting for approval before the 975-dose boxes used to transport the vaccine can be split up into batches suitable for further distribution within the community.
As the government works to scale up its vaccination programme – which health secretary Matt Hancock has described as a “mammoth logistical operation” – patients are being asked not to contact their GP surgeries about when they may be able to receive doses.
South Street Surgery, in Bishops Stortford, told its patients that it was awaiting further information from the government as to when supplies of the vaccine would be made available.
“Please do not ring the surgery regarding this,” the GP said in a text message sent out on Thursday. “We will send invitations to eligible patients as soon as we know when we will receive it. Thank you.”
Haxby Group, a provider of GP services in York and Hull, said in a statement that it would keep people informed regarding the availability of the vaccine.
“We would like to reassure our patients that it is our intention to be involved in the roll out of the Covid-19 Vaccination as soon as it becomes available in General Practice,” the group said. “We don’t have exact details as yet. Please do not ring the surgery.”
In Weymouth, the Bridges Medical Practice tweeted that patients would receive “with more information in due course”. It added: “Please do not ring the surgery to enquire about the vaccine.”
The Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which oversees health services for more than 700,000 people living in the region, said “there will be information for the public soon which will tell you when and where you can get the vaccine and how to book.”
“While we are planning the delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine we would ask that people do not contact GP surgeries asking when it will be available or try to book an appointment for it,” the group said in a statement.
“GPs will not be the only service delivering the vaccine but, like the flu vaccine, they will focus on the most vulnerable groups first.”
Meanwhile, experts have called for patience and said the vaccination priority list is designed to be flexible, after it was suggested that care home residents will not be included in the first wave of the rollout.
Care homes and the elderly are at the top of the list but logistical issues with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab mean there are difficulties in getting it to residents.
The two companies have said the vaccine can be sent to care homes as long as it travels for no more than six hours after it leaves cold storage and is then put in a normal fridge at 2C to 8C.
But there is not yet approval from the MHRA to split the vaccine boxes containing 975 doses, meaning some would be wasted if sent to individual residential homes.
England's deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said it would not be viable to get individual doses of the jab to elderly people unable to leave their homes.
Liam Smeeth, the non-executive director of MHRA, said the logistics of the rollout “are going to have to be based around what we can achieve”.
He added: "Hopefully other vaccines will be coming on licence and approved as safe with time, very quickly indeed, and we will be able to vaccinate the wider groups that are currently recommended."
Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said he understood the news about care home delays would be disappointing for residents and their families, but asked for "a very small degree of patience" in delivering a new vaccine.
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