Our flu vaccination clinics have been very successful to date, and thank you to our patients for your continued support while we manage the unprecedented interest in flu vaccines this year, and for your encouraging feedback on the organisation of the clinics so far. We are sure that it will have been brought to everyones attention via the media that there is a national concern with regards to accessing the flu vaccine, particularly for our over 18 and under 65 year old patients who are at increased risk.
As a practice, we have decided to assist further with the vaccine delivery programme where possible, and access additional vaccines from the Welsh Government central supply. We are attempting to do this on a daily basis, and hope to have positive news for you soon. We hope to organise additional clinics in November in order to administer these vaccines, if and when the central stock arrives. If you fall within this age range, please do not contact the practice until further notice of vaccine availability, but please be assured, the practice and the Health Board are doing everything in our power to ensure we have access to the stock needed to vaccinate interested patients. Our next flu clinic will be tomorrow afternoon, and as usual, the practice will be closed to all other services. We hope tomorrows clinic will run as smoothly as the previous ones.
To support this, the Local Medical Committee (LMC) for Powys, has released this message to the media:
Dyfed Powys Local Medical Committee
Press Release
Increased demand for flu vaccinations this winter is a concern for GPs in Mid Wales.
GPs in Powys have been overwhelmed by demand for flu vaccinations this winter and fear that not everyone who wants a vaccination will get one.
Each year the Chief Medical Officer identifies the priority groups for vaccination – the over 65s, those with certain long-term health conditions and children. In response, GP practices in Powys plan a military style operation to deliver flu vaccinations to their vulnerable patients. This starts in January each year when an order is placed for the vaccinations required the following autumn. To reduce wastage, the size of the order is based on the number of patients who requested a vaccination in the previous year. For the 2020 flu campaign, orders were placed at the beginning of the year, long before COVID-19 was first in the news.
As part of the preparation for this year’s campaign, GP practices were required to consider how they would deliver vaccinations to patients while addressing the additional complications associated with the need for social distancing, the wearing of protective equipment and the availability of sufficient staff. As a direct consequence, each vaccination will take longer to deliver, and fewer patients will be seen at each flu clinic. Taken together this has led to the perfect storm of more eligible patients than normal requesting a vaccination, an insufficient supply of vaccine due to the increased demand not being anticipated at the time of ordering and a shortfall in the number of staff in GP practices required to safely deliver the additional vaccinations.
Dr Peter Horvath-Howard, Medical Director at Dyfed Powys Local Medical Committee said: “GPs and their teams have gone above and beyond to support patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to support them as we face dramatically increased referral times for hospital treatment and backlogs across NHS services due to the impact of the virus.”
Dr Horvath-Howard went on to say: “GPs and their staff are working incredibly hard to rapidly embrace new ways of working to ensure both patients and the workforce are protected. GP practices have, however, limited resources to meet additional demand, while continuing to deliver routine consultations for their patients.”
YGP thank the LMC and Dr Peter Horvath-Howard for their continued support in these unprecedented times.