Professor Mike Holmes, who leads York’s vaccination centre at Askham Bar, tells in his latest column for The Press how the York jab site hit a vaccination record this weekend

THE power of collaborative team work has never been more evident than over the last few days in York as we pulled out all the stops to vaccinate a record number of people, with almost 12,000 people attending for vaccinations over the weekend. Opening the site from 6am until 11pm over the weekend has been an amazing effort. Vaccine supply was good, but it meant clinical and admin staff, traffic marshals and volunteers had to opt in to work additional hours to keep the site running. We were overwhelmed with offers from members of the team to work the extra shifts – it’s so impressive how much of an effort everyone is putting in to speed up the vaccine programme and I’ve been really humbled by their commitment.

We’re currently delivering all three of the licenced vaccines at the site – the AztraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer. The programme gains more significance as experts become aware of more Covid-19 variants spreading in the community and some in our region. Our immediate priority is to make sure we vaccinate all eligible adults with a first dose and help people re-book their second dose appointments. The message is clear – if you’re over 34 yrs old you can book your first vaccine now. The rationale for this weekend’s effort was to bring forward second doses to 8 week for our residents in the JCVI cohorts 1-9.

If you, or anyone you know, is over 50 years-old and hasn’t yet been vaccinated, it’s not too late. We very much welcome you here at the York Vaccination Centre – all you need to do is go online and book or ring 119. To keep everyone safe and protected as new variants of the virus emerge, it’s more important than ever for you to come forward.

As people return to work and our hospitality and other industries open up, some of our volunteer workers have understandably had to stop working at the site. So we’ve started a recruitment drive for new volunteers. If you’re keen to be part of this historical vaccination programme, please get in touch via our website.

We pride ourselves at Nimbuscare as being very much a community organisation, so we’re pleased to have joined with local colleges to offer work experience opportunities at the vaccination centre. It’s been great this week to welcome students from a number for schools and colleges across York who are volunteering on site. Learning about how healthcare works must be a good thing for your people, especially if they are looking at careers in the NHS.

Here at Nimbuscare, we’re more than a vaccination programme. We have worked to support our community during the pandemic and are now working with local partners to support the city’s health and social care recovery form the pandemic. We can build on what we have achieved in the last year to improve health and care outcomes moving forward