ALMOST 4,000 people got jabs at York’s Covid vaccination centres at the weekend, after organisers "listened and learned" when problems developed last week.

It has also emerged that almost all of York’s over 80s have now been given their first vaccination, and that many of the teams who worked flat out on Saturday and Sunday have not had a day off since Christmas.

Professor Mike Holmes, who leads the local and national vaccination centres at the former Askham Bar Park&Ride site, has given the update in his weekly column for The Press, which reported last Wednesday how drivers faced long queues getting into the site and finding a parking space.

Prof Holmes said that this was the first day when both the local and national vaccination services were operating alongside each other, doubling the numbers of people coming to the site, and people were held up due to unforeseen traffic flow problems and booking system issues.

He said that by 10am, the problem had been identified and fixed. “We held our hands up and said sorry for the delay,” he said. "Everyone would get their vaccination, we told them. And everyone did. By the afternoon things were starting to ease and by 4pm we had everything resolved. We managed to vaccinate more than 2,000 people that day, despite all the problems. Staff went home exhausted, but satisfied that they had done everything humanly possible to make sure that things would go better the next day.

“We listened to people, heard what they were saying about the system and learnt. We put things in place to ensure the problems would not reoccur and communicated this with our teams.”

He said that working flat out, the centres vaccinated almost 4,000 people at the weekend, adding: “Many of the teams working on Saturday and Sunday have not had days off since Christmas.”