THIS week it is exactly one year since the Nimbuscare team took over a disused car park in York, transforming it into a Vaccination Centre.

So, it is apt that our teams will also be marking our 400,000th Covid vaccination this week.

On October 5, 2020, we opened the Askham Bar Vaccination Centre, offering flu jabs to our over 50s population in York.

Many people will remember driving up the aisles under the covered awnings, offering their arms out of car windows to get their flu jabs.

Clinicians and administrators stood outside in freezing conditions through the grim winter days to protect our population during that first winter of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We very much hoped then that the vaccine was on its away, and our teams were preparing to deliver it, as soon as it was ready.

Two months later, in December 2020, York was one of the first cities to start offering the Pfizer and Astra Zeneca vaccines, first as a local vaccination centre and then as a National Vaccination Centre, with people coming to us from many miles around to get their vaccine.

Since then, we’ve recruited more than 150 GPs, nurses and vaccinators and around 400 volunteers.

We’ve delivered 400,000 vaccinations and worked collaboratively as a city to protect our people.

In addition, we’ve made 12,000 support phone calls to people with Covid, managed a step-down service for Covid patients discharged from hospital and run a community-based Long Covid service.

As I keep saying, however, there is more to Nimbuscare than just a vaccination service.

With the help of our health and care partners, general practice in York has been building new and enhanced services to improve healthcare for local people.

Almost 10,000 additional evening and weekend appointments have been delivered through our ‘Improving Access’ service.

We’ve set up contraceptive clinics and city-wide cervical screening clinics, as well as warfarin monitoring services.

These are run in some of our GP practice surgery sites.

The aim is to keep people healthy in our community and keep our hospitals free for more urgent, critical care.

Our values are clear and have been set out by our member GP practices.

We’re very much looking to the future. Being a not-for-profit organisation, we want to keep reinvesting back into the community.

We also want to share our learning and we’ve taken every opportunity to talk about what we’re doing here in the city to colleagues across the region, around the UK and internationally.

But, the most impressive part of the last 12 months cannot be seen in the data.

For me, it’s the fact that all our GP practices have come together to try to do things differently for the benefit of the population and that our city has embraced Nimbuscare as part of the community.

People have supported us in ways we cannot measure – with letters of support, kindness, thank you cards and homemade cakes, offers of support, volunteering and sponsorship.

They have come in their droves to help us when we’ve needed it and come when we’ve asked them to get their vaccines.

Local businesses have rallied round to do their bit and we’ve worked closely with schools, colleges and our universities.

We’ve seen people travel through bleak conditions to get to us and use every mode of transport. Our staff have gone above and beyond and for that we are ever grateful.

So, this week we will be celebrating how far we’ve come and how we can move forward to further improve health and care for the people of York.

The public have been incredible too and if you haven’t already taken up the offer of your Covid vaccine, it’s not too late.

Nimbuscare will be pleased to see you and vaccinate you so please come down and help us celebrate our first year at Askham Bar.