Readers of the Hampshire Chronicle will know I have been pressing since the launch of the “Get Boosted Now” campaign to bring some walk-in capacity to Winchester. This is to supplement the good work our local GP surgeries and others are doing to get us fully vaccinated in places which are easy to access.
I was really pleased therefore when we managed to bring these online earlier this month and the pop-ups, at Badger Farm and the Park & Ride South site near junction 11, reported brisk business.
I am now trying to encourage Ministers to look further ahead. As we transition Covid from pandemic to endemic – like influenza – we have to consider what an ongoing vaccination programme looks like in practice. Our primary care networks have pulled out all the stops – and given us one of the most open economies in the world as a result – but they cannot operate on this war footing indefinitely.
The Government’s promised long-term ‘learning to live with Covid’ plan needs to outline how we will do just that, including how we might potentially vaccine large parts of the population ongoing. This is about workforce, yes, but it’s also about practical considerations right down to where the jabs will take place. Our GP surgeries don’t always have the capacity and, when it comes to children, our schools certainly don’t. They’re centres of education not medical facilities.
As I said in the Commons during a recent speech, the new National Institute for Health Protection needs to bring forward plans in this respect.
Another practical issue, which I raised in the Commons last week with the Prime Minister is opening up travel in a fair and equitable way.
We had great news this week with the announcement that day two tests for the fully vaccinated entering or returning to the UK will be scrapped. This brings international travel towards near-normality and is one of the last things our Government can do to aid that; much else resting with the entry requirements still required by countries including France and Spain.
But for teenagers, maybe wishing to travel with their families this half-term or at Easter, there are issues proving vaccination status via the digital NHS pass as everyone else can. So it’s welcome that, from the start of February, 12 to 15 year olds in England will be able to prove their vaccination status for international outbound travel. The system is not however, able to provide proof of one jab and a recent infection (required by some countries) and that is a problem which Government needs to address urgently.
My view is that we now largely have a pandemic of the unvaccinated but must remember not everyone in this category is vaccine hesitant or refusers. There are still a number of people who cannot have their next vaccination because of a recent Covid infection and there are, of course, those who are unable to take the vaccine in its’ current form because of an existing health condition.
That long term plan – which must also set out how we will act when the next variant comes along – should be clear how we will support the unvaccinated to do the right thing for themselves and the common good. In my experience people with poor health outcomes often have complex challenges and are excluded from good health in many different ways so it’s not unsurprising the Covid vaccine is the latest evidence of that. We need to understand a little more and condemn a lot less because it’s in all our interests at the end of the day.
Steve Brine MP
