NHS walk-in centres promote shots for ALL over 18s from Saturday

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The big push to offer boosters to all British adults is already in chaos today with two-month waits for jabs online while some GPs and NHS walk-in centres are already ignoring Government guidance and giving jabs to all over-18s immediately when the elderly or vulnerable still can’t get one before Christmas or within 30 miles of their home.

MailOnline has been inundated with emails from readers who have been eligible for a jab for weeks or even months but have been unable to get an appointment at all – or until the new year – because a third of mass vaccinations centres have closed in 2021.

Despite 500 new vaccination sites opening since April, the rate of vaccination has plunged from 800,000 per day in March this year to just  342,000 on average now. At the current rate, it will take three-and-a-half months for the programme to reach everybody — sometime in March.

With growing doubts over whether Boris Johnson can hit his 500,000 jabs-a-day target, one Government source said: ‘No date has yet been set for inviting under-40s’ while another insider said: ‘We should have fixed the roof while the sun was shining and boosted everyone weeks ago. Instead we’ve waited for a new variant to come and now it’s panic stations’.

Before today, about 18million people had received a booster out of 25million who could have come forward. But the change in advice means that 53million Britons in total will eventually qualify for a booster and Boris Johnson wants them all offered jabs by January 31.

Sajid Javid has urged the under-40s to be patient and wait for their GP to contact them — but it appears parts of the NHS and some pharmacies are taking matters into their own hands. Mr Javid himself caused confusion this week when he walked a journalist into the vaccination centre at a London hospital, even though Sky News’ Chief Political Correspondent Jon Craig near believed he wasn’t eligible for his third dose until Dec 14.

Park Royal Medical Practice, which is part of the Central Middlesex Hospital in west London, is advertising a mass vaccination event for ‘everyone’ over the age of 18 who is already double-jabbed, with at least three months since the last dose.

While at a NHS centre in Bristol, people were travelling for 30 miles or more because of a lack of availability in their area, but the wait was more than two hours and some people were turned away. 

One 55-year-old from Kent who was invited to book one ten days ago told MailOnline that the NHS told her to go to Essex for a jab so she tried a walk in centre in Chatham but was turned away.

Another patient, who is 67, said he had been trying to book a booster on the 119 number for the past fortnight but has been told there is no availability and his GP says that he must wait to be contacted. One woman in her forties said the NHS website is refusing to let her book despite her being eligible on age grounds and because she is severely asthmatic. 

On Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister told a Downing Street press conference he would “throw everything” at the booster vaccination campaign to tackle the variant’s spread.

Everyone eligible is to be offered a booster jab by the end of January, with at least 400 military personnel helping the NHS and vaccination centres “popping up like Christmas trees”, he added.

Today Health Secretary Mr Javid today bowed to demands from GPs who want less work and more money so they can concentrate on the vaccination programme.

Face-to-face appointments, which have been slowly returning over the summer and autumn, could be abandoned as well as some admin as family doctors become the frontiers of the UK’s mammoth jab drive. 

Pharmacists are today demanding more taxpayers’ cash as Boris Johnson plans to expand the number of pharmacies offering the jab from 1,400 now to 2,900 by the end of the month. This is despite GPs and pharmacists being offered payments of £15 a jab – up £2.50 – to increase capacity, with an extra £5 for doses delivered on Sundays.

Mr Javid has been pushing for doctors to offer more in-person consultations, which are still a fifth lower than pre-pandemic levels. But GPs are now expected to be able to ignore these targets to deliver booster jabs to ensure every adult in the UK is offered an appointment by the end of January, in a bid to increase protection against the new Omicron variant.

‘The NHS is working on that right now with GP representatives,’ the Health Secretary told BBC Breakfast.

‘I am confident that they will work out a way where some of the workload of GPs can be temporarily suspended or GPs can be helped in other ways so they can concentrate on vaccine delivery.’

Mr Javid urged people who were struggling to book a booster jab to contact their MP.

‘If they have contacted their GP and they are not getting anywhere, the best they can do right now is probably contact their Member of Parliament directly and that will come to me and we will do everything we can to help,’ he said.

GPs say that some of their other work must be axed to join the jab fight. 

Vice chairman of the Royal College of GPs, Gary Howson, said: ‘GPs are already working to full capacity at the moment. And if we’re going to divert our attention to the vaccination programme then there are some decisions that have to be made as to where we have most clinical value.

‘Understandably there are concerns about the new variant especially because we’re waiting for the science – and it does seem that the best bet for reducing the consequences going forward is to maximise those booster numbers.

‘We’re ready to gear up and play our part in the programme as we did earlier in the year.  We need to understand what we will be able to stop doing. Tick box exercises, audits, and things that take us away from work and we need the Government to deliver on its manifesto pledges to bring in 6,000 more GPs, and 26,000 more team members by 2024.

Leyla Hannbeck, CEO of the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies, said: ‘Throughout the pandemic and the lockdowns we have been open and offering accessible care to our patients. Since the new year we have campaigned for more pharmacists to be involved in the vaccination programme.

‘At the moment we have around 1,400 pharmacies that are delivering the vaccination service and have delivered 15m jabs. The Government wants another 1,500 pharmacies involved. We have the willingness and infrastructure to get more involved but we do need support from the Government that the level of funding and the support is there for our teams to do this as well as what we do every day.

‘We need to make sure we’re adequately compensated for this to ensure nobody is out of pocket. We need to make sure it is business as usual.

‘At the moment we’re under a lot of pressure because we’re also doing flu jabs and smashing all records. We do need more staff’. 

Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive, said she is looking at how GPs can ‘deliver even more jabs by cutting other burdens on them’.

Ministers had been pushing for doctors to offer more in-person consultations, which are still a fifth lower than pre-pandemic levels.

But GPs are now expected to be on the frontline delivering booster jabs to ensure every adult in the UK is offered an appointment by the end of January, in a bid to increase protection against the new Omicron variant.

Doctors and community pharmacists have dished out ‘the lion’s share of the vaccinations so far’ and they will be paid £15 per jab they dish out over the next two months, Ms Pritchard said.

But it will likely mean fewer face-to-face GP appointments for patients, which are already running at about a fifth of the pre-pandemic level. 

Boris Johnson today unveiled the ramped-up booster drive to shield the nation against the Omicron, after eight more cases of the strain were found in England.

Plans include drafting in the Army, opening more vaccination centres and recruiting tens of thousands of volunteers to help with the rollout.

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference this afternoon alongside the Prime Minister and Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Ms Pritchard said: ‘Our hard-working GPs, community pharmacists and their primary care colleagues have delivered the lion share of the vaccinations so far.

‘We are looking at how we can help them deliver even more jabs by cutting other burdens on them to free up clinicians’ time.

‘And we will ensure they are properly rewarded for their efforts, particularly when they take time to visit vulnerable housebound patients who can’t travel to vaccination sites.’

GPs will get £15 for every injection they administer – up from the current £12.58 fee.

Doctors and pharmacists will also get a £5 bonus per shot if they do on Sundays, as well as a £30 premium for jabs delivered vulnerable people in their homes. 

And the Care Quality Commission, the regulator for health and social care services in England, will stop routinely inspecting general practice ‘to free up clinicians’ time’, Ms Pritchard said.

But GPs getting involved in the rollout will likely mean fewer face-to-face GP appointments, which are already running at about a fifth of the pre-pandemic level. 

NHS England data shows 64 per cent of GP appointments in October were face-to-face, compared to eight in 10 before the pandemic.

Mr Javid announced a £250million package for GP surgeries last month to help doctors offer more in-person consultations.

But the plans, which include ‘naming and shaming’ practices not offering sufficient numbers, were rejected by doctors. 

Medics say some patients prefer virtual consultations because they are more convenient, but there are reports of vulnerable people not getting the access they desperately need. 

And coroners have warned that remote appointments may have contributed to deaths. 

One NHS chief executive said getting GPs to lead the vaccination rollout was ‘a very big ask, on top of many other very big asks’, adding it would be extremely difficult to hit the January target due to a lack of medics, volunteers and facilities after a third of vaccination centres closed this summer.

And a GP practice manager tweeted: ‘Cash won’t make much difference, it’s the workload & workforce that’s the problem. Is not just jabbers but the back room engine tracking and calling patients, organising rotas, sorting out logistics etc’.

Dr Farah Jameel, chair of the BMA’s England GP committee, said today that less urgent appointments like routine blood pressure checks should go. ‘We are bound by these contracts. We have been calling for that to be lifted for months now. We are a burnt out workforce’, she said.

‘What we are asking for a refocus of clinical priorities. We simply cannot deliver everything. We need to focus on clinical need. At this moment on time, the focus has to be on rolling out a monumental vaccination and booster programme and all hands on deck. We can deliver that but we are distracted by scattergun priorities. We do need to be released from contractual responsibilities’.

She added: ‘There is this obsession with undeliverable targets. Since April all our contractual targets switched back on and that correlates with practices withdrawing from the vaccination scheme because we simply do not have the workforce.’

Announcing the new booster plans today, the Prime Minister revealed he is drafting in the Army again to get jabs in arms, as he promised to deliver another ‘great British vaccination effort’.

The Government is also recruiting 10,000 more paid vaccine volunteers and ‘tens of thousands’ more volunteers to help with the mammoth drive. 

Mr Johnson told the Downing Street briefing that new vaccination centres will be ‘popping up like Christmas trees’.

Scientists have cautioned that the boosters will probably not give the same level of protection against Omicron as they do against Delta because the new strain is so evolved. 

Some 22 cases of the Omicron have been recorded in the UK so far, with new infections today spotted in Barnet and Haringey in London, Liverpool, North Norfolk and Sutton.

No10 hopes that the top-up in immunity will give people at least some extra protection against the variant. 

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the Government has set ‘hugely ambitious targets and we’re asking a huge amount from the NHS’. 

‘But I have no doubt that they will rise to the challenge, just as they have done throughout this pandemic,’ he said.

Mr Javid said everyone has a ‘role to play’ in the ‘national mission’ and must ‘roll up our sleeves and get protected when the time comes’ to have the ‘best chance of a Christmas with our loved ones’.