Nearly 70,000 life-saving jabs now administered to people in Horsham

More than 30,000 people have been vaccinated at Christ’s Hospital and another 37,000 have been vaccinated at Park Surgery.

But Park is now seeking registered health care professionals to step forward to help administer the jabs.

And Dr Matt Greenwood clinical director of the Horsham Collaborative Primary Care Network - which looks after patients from Courtyard, Southwater, Cowfold and Rudgwick surgeries and is organising the vaccine rollout at Christ’s Hospital - said that they, too, were looking for more volunteers.

He said: “All is going very well, even with the Bluecoats Gym (at Christ’s Hospital) open and reduced car parking, our capacity to vaccinate large numbers of our patients has not been affected.”

He added: “We are always looking for volunteers but it is best for people to apply via the council volunteering service (https://www.horsham.gov.uk/voluntary-sector-support).”

He said it took 60 volunteers to run the vaccine centre for a day “but with that level of coordination we are able to vaccinate 250-300 patients an hour.

“The incredible facilities at Christ’s Hospital School have allowed The Horsham Collaborative Network to help Horsham patients to get their vaccines so fast.”

And he paid tribute to support the volunteers had received on vaccination days. “We have great snacks, lunches and icelollies kindly donated by Tesco Muffin Break and icelolly.com.

“We would welcome all who would like to be part of being in our great team. The commitment has been incredible with some of our volunteers being part of the team since we opened in December.”

He said that they hoped to offer vaccines at Christ’s Hospital to under 30s ‘very soon’ and urged people to make sure that their contact details were kept up to date at their GP surgeries.

Meanwhile, the Horsham Central Primary Care Network - which is looking after patients from Park, Holbrook, Orchard and Riverside surgeries - says the vaccine rollout being undertaken at Park Surgery is also very successful.

Practice manager Lucy Barber said: “Vaccine rollout is going really well at Park Surgery, although we are currently struggling with vaccinator resource as most of this has been done by our own clinical staff and GP partners which is difficult to sustain.

“We have tapped into the wider vaccinator bank staff and this really helped until the ease of lockdown so if anyone out there who is a registered health care professional and has done the Covid Vaccinator training wants to help we really need it.”

She said that 23,546 patients had received their first does and another 13,644 had received two doses of the vaccine.

And she added: “Park Surgery had done an amazing job throughout this programme with most of us hardly having a day off since mid December.

“We have also continued to provide all our other services as usual although our phone lines have been extremely busy of course.

“I am hugely proud of our team and it’s been really wonderful to receive thanks from the patients and community.”