A care provider which operates care homes across the country has completed its Covid-19 inoculation programme – with residents already talking about how their lives are set to be transformed.
Mansfield Care has successfully offered the vaccine to all of its frontline staff and residents, and have carried out the procedure to all those who have requested the vaccine.
Edinburgh homes Haugh House, Craighall House, Eildon House, and Belleville Lodge are among 11 care homes operated by Mansfield Care to have completed the vaccination programme.
Resident and journalist at Haugh House, Michael Fry, found the vaccine to have no physical impairment on him.
Michael said: “The vaccine had no physical effect on me, but made me happy in thinking I’ll be able to get out and about all the sooner. I have been in lockdown since March 2020, so I’m hoping the vaccine will let me get out again so I can see my family.”
85-year-old Craighall House resident, Jean McMillan, opted to take the vaccine to keep the infection rates down.
Jean said: “I received my first dose of vaccine on January 20. I didn’t feel a thing and felt fine afterwards. I decided to have the vaccine to help keep the rates down and because I have missed being able to see my daughter, Caroline and my great grandson Murray.”
Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Hume said: “It’s been a difficult year for everyone, so to have the vaccination programme fully completed with the full support of our staff and residents has been an incredible lift.
“Our philosophy that ‘small is key’ has been integral to keeping our residents and staff safe, while maintaining an optimal level of care throughout the pandemic.
“At this stage we cannot predict how the virus will mutate, and what impact that will have on our community, but we are determined to cover all bases and maintain the safety of everyone in our care homes.
“Again we would like to thank our incredible staff who have worked tirelessly over this turbulent period, and our residents for their continued diligence and patience.”
Mansfield Care has also implemented a regimented and rapid lateral flow testing process which swab tests staff two to three times per week and provides test results within 30 minutes, to ensure the safety of residents and staff alike.
In addition to its rigorous testing, the provider has also focused on creating new activities to combat the boredom and loneliness caused by social distancing and restrictions, including personalised activity boxes for residents and a creative conversation ball game designed specifically for residents with dementia.
Mansfield Care specialises in small, friendly, residential care homes across Edinburgh, Borders and West of Scotland, providing individualised care in state of the art facilities.
The Mansfield Care ethos is inspired by the kind of care many would wish for later in life – positive, empathetic, respectful and homely.
A door-to-door testing blitz is under way this morning in a bid to find and eliminate every case of the South African coronavirus variant in England.
On-the-spot doorstep tests, home testing kits and mobile testing units are being deployed to reach 80,000 people in eight specific neighbourhoods in an urgent effort to stop the spread of the South African strain.
Health Minister Matt Hancock told last night’s Coronavirus media briefing:
Good afternoon and welcome to Downing Street for today’s coronavirus briefing. And I’m joined by Professor Steve Powis, the Medical Director of NHS England. And Dr Susan Hopkins, who is the Chief Medical Advisor to Public Health England and to NHS Test and Trace.
I’ve got quite a lot of news to bring you up to speed on. Right at the start, I wanted to tell you where we are with our vaccine programme.
I’m so proud of the team, who’ve now vaccinated 9.2 million people across the UK, that includes 931,204 vaccinations just this weekend.
And to put that into context – that’s one in every 60 adults in the whole United Kingdom vaccinated in one single weekend. It’s a mammoth effort.
I know how much these jabs mean to people. And I’m so grateful for all the messages that we get, and all the pictures that I’m sent of people being vaccinated.
It fills me with pride that so many people are doing so much to help for this roll out to happen so smoothly and I want to say thanks to you all.
Care homes
Getting vaccinated is an emotional moment for so many people and that’s because it is about protecting those who are most vulnerable to COVID.
We’ve now vaccinated almost 9 in 10 of all over 80s in the UK and now, as of today, we’ve vaccinated over half of all people in their 70s.
And, I’m delighted that I can tell you we’ve visited every eligible care home with older residents in England, and offered vaccinations to all their residents and staff.
This has been an incredible example of health and social care working together, working side-by-side to protect people most in need.
As Professor Martin Green, the Chief Executive of Care England said today, this is a “wonderful achievement and one that is testament to the hard work of care home staff and our colleagues in the NHS and local authorities.”
And, I want to thank every single person who’s helped us to get this far.
Vaccine supply
I also want to let you know some good news on vaccine supply. Today we’ve ordered another 40 million vaccine doses from Valneva.
As we have all along, we’ve invested early and at risk, before we know for sure if it will come good because from the start, we’ve taken a no regrets attitude to backing vaccines. We’ve tried to leave nothing on the table.
If this gets regulatory approval, the Valneva vaccine, like many others, will be made right here in the UK.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is made in Oxford, and Staffordshire, and Wrexham. The Novovax vaccine is being manufactured on Teesside. And if approved, this Valneva vaccine will be manufactured in Livingston, in Scotland.
We didn’t start this pandemic with a large-scale on-shore vaccine manufacturing capability, so we’re building one, all across the United Kingdom.
The vaccine programme just goes to show how important it is to have the UK working as one, together.
International
We now have over 400 million doses of vaccines on order. This is obviously more than the UK population needs. And my attitude has always been we protect every UK citizen as fast as we can. And at the same time, we’re generous around the world.
I want to say this to our international partners. Of course, I’m delighted about how well this is going at home. But I believe fundamentally that the vaccine roll out is a global effort.
One of the many reasons that I’m so happy with the AstraZenenca contract is that it not just that it gives us a strong supply here but because it is the only vaccine being deployed that’s available to the whole world at cost.
And because it’s logistically straightforward, it can be practically deployed in the poorest parts of the world too.
So, we will protect UK supply and we’ll play our part to ensure the whole world can get the jab.
New variants
Another area where we’re helping around the world is in spotting new variants.
Our global leadership in genomic sequencing has helped us to spot new variants here in the UK, and quickly alert the rest of the world. But there are other countries that don’t have the capacity they need.
Last week, we offered our capacity and expertise to other nations through our New Variant Assessment Platform, because a mutation in one part of the world is a threat to people everywhere.
For example, our South African colleagues spotted a new variant through their high quality genomic sequencing and rightly notified the world, as we did with the variant that we discovered here in the UK.
We’ve now identified 105 cases of this variant here. Eleven of those cases don’t appear to have any links to international travel.
There’s currently no evidence to suggest this variant is any more severe, but we need to come down on it hard and we will. We’ve already made sure that all these cases are isolating and that we’ve done enhanced contact tracing of all of their close contacts.
Working with local authorities, we are going door-to-door to test people in the local area. These cases have been identified in the following postcodes:
W7, N17, CR4, WS2, ME15, EN10, GU21, and PR9
If you live in one of these postcodes where we’re sending in enhanced testing, then it’s imperative that you stay at home. And that you get a test, even if you don’t have symptoms.
This is so important so that we can break the chains of transmission of this new variant. And we’ve got to bring this virus to heel.
So there’s lots of good news, but this is a stark reminder that the fight against this virus isn’t over yet.
Every day, we’re protecting more people and getting ourselves one step closer to normal life. But this is no time to let things slip. So let’s, all of us, do what we must to get this virus under control.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam highlights the importance of continuing to follow the guidance, even after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination
Next Saturday will mark the first anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and next Sunday will be one year on from the first case of COVID-19 detected in the UK. It has been a terrible year as the virus has spread across the world causing misery, hardship, death and severely disrupting all of our lives.
The silver lining has been the incredible work of scientists and healthcare professionals across the world. If you had told me 12 months ago, that the UK would have discovered, in dexamethasone, the first treatment proven to reduce COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinated over 5 million people by this point, I would have been astonished. But that is the place in which we find ourselves. Hardship, but also hope.
Many people have played an important role in getting vaccines in arms, including the teams of researchers behind the development of the vaccines, the volunteers who took part in clinical trials, the Vaccines Taskforce who ensured we had supply of vaccine and the NHS staff and volunteers who are now working hard to administer them to people quickly and safely.
Their work has been incredible and we should rightly celebrate this.
Vaccines do offer the way out of the pandemic and a return to life as we knew it – having a pint before watching your local football team, multigenerational family gatherings and big weddings. These really will return! But to make that happen as quickly as possible we need to bring the number of cases down as soon as we can whilst we vaccinate our most vulnerable. To do that there are some important scientific points I want to highlight:
No vaccine has ever been 100% effective so no-one will have 100% protection from the virus. The way to reduce everyone’s risk is to break the chains of transmission and really push down the number of cases.
Vaccines work by tricking your body into thinking it has to fight the virus. It trains you for this fight by making antibodies and stimulating T-cells; then you are ready if you do come across the real thing. However, like any training, getting up to ‘match fitness’ takes time. Your body’s response, the immune response, is only fully trained up around 2 or 3 weeks after you have each of your 2 jabs. If you are older it’s better to allow at least 3 weeks. You can still get COVID in this time.
Even better and longer lasting protection then comes from the second dose so it is really important that everyone gets the second jab.
Really importantly we do not yet know the impact of the vaccine on transmission of the virus. So even after you have had both doses of the vaccine you may still give COVID to someone else and the chains of transmission will then continue. If you change your behaviour you could still be spreading the virus, keeping the number of cases high and putting others at risk who also need their vaccine but are further down the queue.
We still have a very high number of hospitalisations and deaths. A quarter of hospital admissions for COVID-19 are in people under the age of 55. Despite the speed of the rollout, these are people who will not have the vaccine for a while yet.
Some people are questioning the UK policy of trying to give as many at-risk people as possible the first dose of vaccine in the shortest possible time, inevitably extending the interval before the second dose is given.
But what none of these (who ask reasonable questions) will tell me is: who on the at-risk list should suffer slower access to their first dose so that someone else who’s already had one dose (and therefore most of the protection) can get a second? Everyone on the JCVI priority list is at risk from this nasty virus, and vaccines just can’t be produced at an unlimited rate.
It has been a very difficult year for us all and everyone, including me, is desperate to return to seeing the people we love. The vaccine has brought considerable hope and we are in the final furlough of the pandemic but for now, vaccinated or not, we still have to follow the guidance for a bit longer.
As the Chair of ELREC, an equality organisation, I want to share some of our concerns in regards to Covid and the roll out of the vaccine, especially amongst BAME groups.
Since the start of this pandemic, it’s been obvious that information has not always been disseminated properly specifically amongst our local ethnic minority communities.
There hasn’t been official translated information made available to minority groups, specifically to those with language and literacy issues which is quite prevalent amongst the older BAME generations.
People not being able to understand something is daunting as it is but if it relates to their health and wellbeing then it’s an actual risk to them. Many older south Asians living in Edinburgh and Lothians rely on friends and family to relay information to them, and this doesn’t always happen so they are left to rely on foreign messages which may not always be correct.
During the Covid-19 pandemic the information hasn’t always been executed the best or in a responsible manner which has led to many relying on other sources.
Misinformation in these circumstances can be just as deadly as the virus. People need to know factual information about every aspect of the pandemic. As the vaccine is being rolled out, we need to know the facts, in order to ensure all individuals are vaccinated.
We need facts, such as the ingredients and side effects. Many BAME people have underlying health issues and illnesses specific to their groups so how will the vaccine affect them, has it been tested vastly and diversely enough.
Everyone has the right to correct information, in a manner they understand and can apply to their lives and this is the responsibility of every government. I call on the Scottish Government to ensure the facts regarding the vaccine are communicated to the BAME community in a way that reassures them.
Foysol Choudhury MBE
Chair. Edinburgh and Lothian Regional Equality Council
A 101 year old born during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic has received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination.Emily Lawson, from Kirkintilloch, was one of the first in line as part of the rollout of the vaccination programme to vaccinate people over the age of 80 in the community.
Mrs Lawson, born in 1919 as the pandemic spread across the globe, was found at one month old lying next to her mother who had caught the deadly strain of influenza and was too ill to look after her new baby.
Now, more than a century later and living through another pandemic, she has been vaccinated by Samantha Wheadon, a Practice Nurse from Turret Medical Centre in Kirkintilloch.
When asked how she felt about receiving the vaccine she took it in her stride, commenting: “it was normal, just another vaccine”.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) currently has more than 450 vaccinators working across hospital and community settings to deliver COVID-19 vaccinations in a swift and safe manner. Currently the health board is vaccinating around 20,000 people every week and in February, this number is expected to rise to 80,000.
GPs are leading on the vaccination roll-out for their patients aged 80 years and over, and are scheduling appointments locally once they receive supplies of the vaccine.
Dr Linda De Caestecker, Director for Public Health at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “We have had a very high uptake of the vaccine so far with thousands of eligible staff and care home residents vaccinated already and it’s fantastic to see the community rollout begin.
“Our teams are working extremely hard to get as many people possible vaccinated as quickly as possible during this time.
“However, the rollout does not mean we can let our guard down. Our hospitals are extremely busy with COVID-19 admissions and our staff are working tirelessly to look after both COVID and non-COVID patients.
“We would urge everyone to continue following the rules to help minimise the spread of the virus.”
The FACTS guidance:
Face coverings in enclosed spaces,
Avoid crowded places,
Clean your hands regularly,
Two metre distancing
Self-isolate and book a test if you have symptoms.
Home carers in Glasgow City Council’s Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) will launch a ballot for industrial action next week, warning they have “no confidence” over plans for workplace testing of COVID-19 and amid ongoing uncertainty surrounding the vaccination programme.
Over 1,700 GMB Scotland members will take part in a three-week ballot, running from Tuesday 19 January to Monday 8 February, meaning service delivery in the HSCP could be affected by action as early as the week beginning Monday 22 February.
It follows a massive 93 per cent support for action among GMB members in a consultative ballot last month, a direct response to the Scottish Government’s Winter Preparedness Plan which put home carers to the back of the queue in the roll-out of workplace testing delivery.
GMB Scotland Organiser David Hume said:“There is no confidence whatsoever among our members in their employer or the government to sufficiently protect their health and safety at work. And why should there be?
“They were failed on PPE at the outset of this pandemic, they have been left waiting ten months for workplace testing, and some are already encountering problems getting their first vaccine.
“The HSCP should have been fighting tooth and nail for every resource to protect the safety of their employees and their service users. Instead they have been sitting on zoom calls for nearly a year waiting on guidance from the Scottish Government, only for Ministers to leave councils carrying the can for testing delivery.
“The interests of these key workers have been consistently forgotten and they are being treated negligently by their employer, and this government.”
Doses to be administered at over 1,000 GP practices and community centres
Many more people will receive the first dose of the Oxford/Astrazeneca coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in GP practices and community vaccination centres across Scotland from tomorrow (Monday)
The vaccine, approved for use in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on 30 December, has already been administered in primary care settings in NHS Tayside, Lothian, Orkney and Highland.
First doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will now start to be administered in GP practices and community centres across the rest of Scotland this week.
Scotland has an allocation of 533,640 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in January. These doses are available for local order and delivery to the different parts of Scotland over January.
Those aged 80 years and over will be invited to attend for vaccination by their local NHS Board or GP practice via a letter or by phone.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: “The delivery of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a major development for the biggest vaccination programme we have ever delivered.
“I would like to thank everyone involved for their continued efforts to ensure the pace of the programme continues. Next week I will update parliament with further logistical detail of the vaccination programme.
“We have over 1,100 vaccination sites, including over 750 GP practices with a growing core of over 3000 trained vaccinators to deliver the vaccine. When it is your turn to be vaccinated you will be contacted by your local health board and I urge you to please take up the offer.
“Please do not contact your GP but wait for your letter or phone call. And please remember that when the time comes for your second dose, it is crucial you get it as this is vital for longer term protection and to complete the course.
“As ever, we are dependent on the vaccine supply and we continue to explore all possible options to speed up the delivery of all vaccine and bring forward timescales where possible.
“This work, alongside our expanded testing strategy, rigorously complying with restrictions where we live and adhering to the public health guidance, is essential to protect those most at risk and minimise further impact on the NHS and social care services.”
The number of people being treated for coronavirus in Scotland’s hospitals reached another record daily high yesterday.
Latest figures show a total of 1,596 people are in hospital with Covid, up from Friday’s figure of 1,530.
93 Covid-related deaths were recorded on Saturday, the same number as Friday which was the highest daily figure of the pandemic so far.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a statement at the coronavirus press conference yesterday (Tuesday 5 January):
Good afternoon,
I want to update everybody about vaccines because across this entire country today there are people – everybody – making another huge sacrifice.
Teachers and pupils coping with online learning
Businesses who have borne the brunt of successive lockdowns,
and, of course, the amazing staff of our NHS and our care workers who are grappling with a new variant – this new variant – of coronavirus.
And I believe that when everybody looks at the position people understand overwhelmingly that we have no choice when the Office of National Statistics is telling us that more than 2 per cent of the population is now infected – that’s over 1 million people in England – and when today we have reported another 60,000 new cases. And when the number of patients in hospitals in England is now 40 per cent higher than at the first peak in April.
I think obviously – everybody, you all – want to be sure that we in government are now using every second of this lockdown to put that invisible shield around the elderly and the vulnerable in the form of vaccination and so to begin to bring this crisis to an end.
And I can tell you that this afternoon, with Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca combined, as of this afternoon we have now vaccinated over 1.1 million people in England and over 1.3 million across the UK.
And that includes more than 650,000 people over 80, which is 23 per cent of all the over 80s in England
And that means that nearly 1 in 4 of one of the most vulnerable groups will have in 2 to 3 weeks – all of them – a significant degree of immunity.
And when you consider that the average age of Covid fatalities is in the 80s you can see the importance of what we have already achieved.
And that is why I believe that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was right to draw up a programme aimed at saving the most lives the fastest.
So by February 15th, as I said last night, the NHS is committed to offering a vaccination to everyone in the top four priority groups including older care home residents and staff, everyone over 70, all frontline NHS and care staff and all those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.
And to help us with meeting this target we already have 595 GP-led sites providing vaccines, with a further 180 coming on stream later this week.
We have 107 hospital sites – with a further 100 later this week
So that is almost a thousand sites – vaccination sites – across the country by the end of this week
And next week we will also have 7 vaccination centres opening in places such as sports stadia and exhibition centres.
We know that there will still be long weeks ahead in which we must persevere with these restrictions, but I want to give you – the British people – the maximum possible transparency about this vaccine roll out with more detail on Thursday and daily updates from Monday so that you can see, day by day and jab by jab, how much progress we are making.
The first venues for the mass COVID-19 vaccination programme in Lothian have been selected. NHS Lothian has identified and agreed three large-scale venues capable of providing thousands of vaccinations at a time.
The next phase, known as Wave 2, of the vaccination programme is under way across Scotland to vaccinate people aged 75 to 79 years of age, followed by those aged 70 -74 and 65 – 69, followed by adults with risk factors over the age of 60.
NHS Lothian has been working with councils, health and social care partnerships and other partners to ensure the sites are ready when the roll-out begins, which is expected in February.
The Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), The Pyramids Business Park (PBP) in West Lothian have been agreed and details are being finalised for Queen Margaret University (QMU) in East Lothian.
A number of local supplementary centres are also being set up by the four Health and Social Care Partnerships – East Lothian, Edinburgh, Midlothian and West Lothian – to supplement the bigger venues.
Announcing the choice of centres on Christmas Eve,David Small, Director of Primary Care Transformation, NHS Lothian, who is leading the programme, said he was delighted that three large-scale venues had been agreed.
“This is the biggest mass vaccination programme undertaken. It is a massive task and even though all of the teams are working at speed, we know we need to make sure we get the delivery right, first time.
“There are a lot of challenges involved across the project, but we are meeting each one and we are delighted that these three venues are finalised. We still have a number of other options to consider and explore, but this is a milestone.
“It means we can begin work in the new year while we continue planning the smaller centres which will supplement the bigger venues.”
Plans are being developed to create a walk-through centre at the EICC which would be capable of vaccinating 26,000 people in a week at a total of around 50 stations.
A similar walk-through centre is expected to be set up in PBP, which could provide 12,000 vaccinations every week using around 25 stations.
A drive-through vaccination centre is then being planned for Queen Margaret University in East Lothian that would have around 16 stations and be able to vaccinate 8,000 people a week.
People will be contacted by the NHS when they are eligible for a vaccination appointment. They should not contact the venues directly because they would not hold any of the relevant information.
This new phase will be followed in the Spring by the roll-out of Wave 3, which will again target individual age groups, staring with those aged 60-64, 55- 59, 50-54, followed by the rest of the population.
A leading charity has raised concerns over an apparent Scottish Government u-turn which sees unpaid carers now no longer included in the “first-wave” of COVID-19 vaccinations.
The concern has been raised by Kindred, an advocacy organisation supporting parents of children with complex needs, which has warned of the impact on these children if their parents contract the virus and are unable to provide care.
The charity had made the vaccine call in a letter to Health Cabinet Secretary, Jeane Freeman MSP, on 11th November on the back of a report it published highlighting the “devastating” impact of the pandemic lockdown on families of children with exceptional health needs.
On 4th December, it all became clear in a “Vaccine stakeholder note” from the Scottish Government Directorate for Mental Health and Social Care that “carers and their families are not included in the prioritisation list.”
Director of the charity, Sophie Pilgrim, has written to the Cabinet Secretary on the back of this apparent u-turn on her earlier commitment (letter available on request), noting:
“At this time of national crisis, it seems we are prepared to ignore the plight of our most vulnerable children. These children, with shorter lives, have lost out on therapy, education and social opportunities. Their parents, on whom they are totally dependent, are exhausted to the point of burnout.
“In Scotland, we pride ourselves in aspiring to be the ‘best country in the world for children to grow up’. We should dare to be different and stand up for our children who are most in need. I urge you to include unpaid carers amongst the first to receive the vaccine.”
The repeated call comes on the back of a survey undertaken of the parents of children with complex health needs.1
The results show that:
93 percent of these families experienced an impact on their ability to meet their children’s medical and care needs due to the pandemic; 63 percent said that the impact of the pandemic on their ability to provide care was ‘big’ or ‘severe’.
Two out of every three parents who took part in the survey said sleep deprivation was one of the main factors that impacted their ability to care for their children. It was the norm for these parents to get an average of five hours of broken sleep per night. Kindred has called for an urgent need to investigate the provision of overnight respite care across Scotland.
Over a third of parents received no respite care before the pandemic and this dropped to 60 per cent after the start of the pandemic. This highlights the importance of schools in supporting parents and giving them a break from caring. Almost all the children attended special school with access to therapy, and the expertise of Additional Support for Learning staff. There is no doubt that schools are preventing crisis and family breakdown where a child has high care needs.
Sophie Pilgrim, Director of Kindred, commented: “This apparent u-turn by the Scottish Government is deeply devastating news for the families of children with complex needs and life limiting conditions.
“At this time of national crisis, it seems we are prepared to ignore the plight of our most vulnerable children. These children, with shorter lives, have lost out on therapy, education and social opportunities. Their parents, on whom they are totally dependent, are exhausted to the point of burnout and simply cannot afford to get sick.
“In Scotland, we pride ourselves in aspiring to be the ‘best country in the world for children to grow up’. We should dare to be different and stand up for our children who are most in need.”
Alex Davey, from East Lothian, is fulltime carer to her six-year-old son, Benjamin, who has complex medical needs including tube-feeding, epilepsy and overnight ventilation.
“My key concern as Benjamin’s mother is that my husband and myself contract Covid-19, rendering us incapable of meeting his complex care needs, potentially for a long period of time.
“Early access to the vaccine is therefore imperative to ensure that families like ours can be sure that they can continue to care for their child.
“One can therefore only imagine our joy when we heard that unpaid carers would be among the first wave to receive the vaccine. We cheered, we celebrated, we called each other up and cried tears of pure relief. We were no longer overlooked.
“In fact, we are not just overlooked, we were cruelly misled and our hopes were built up, only to be dashed.
“We cannot understand why the Scottish Government has reneged on its commitment and we would urge it to do the honourable thing and honour the original commitment made.”
