Three trusts in high risk areas no longer getting covid vaccine this week

Several trusts, including Medway and Dartford and Gravesham in Kent, and Leicestershire Partnership, have been dropped from the list of “hospital hubs” in recent days. All three are in “tier three”, the highest level of government covid restrictions, due to high rates — and the rates in the areas of Kent covered by Medway are particularly high.

All three were included in a list of 53 hospitals designated as “hubs” for the vaccination in a list sent to NHS chief executives last week. However, a new list with 49 trusts published over the weekend did not include them.

University College Hospitals London FT has also been dropped from the hubs list.

Leicestershire Partnership Trust’s exclusion from the new list means no sites in Leicester or the surrounding county are able to give the vaccine, despite the area having been under strict restrictions to try to reduce spread since July.

HSJ understands problems with some of the sites which were originally expected to be hubs arose quite late in planning process, and included having enough freezer capacity to store vaccines, ensuring secure storage, and having a licence which covers storage of the vaccine. 

In particular, each of the hub hospitals needs the facilities to store the Pfizer vaccine, which has to be kept at temperatures below -70 degrees centigrade. However, HSJ understands such facilities were available at Medway and the trust — like others — has been planning its vaccination programme. 

On Friday, HSJ reported that more than half of Medway hospital’s beds were filled with covid patients as of last week, and it had a significant number of staff self-isolating. Medway Council is also planning to start asymptomatic testing for critical workers this week because of the very high level of cases and increasing number of deaths.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth tweeted: “Why hasn’t a Leicester hospital been designated as a hub? We have effectively never left lockdown restrictions and our NHS staff have been working so hard… we just want fairness for Leicester.” HSJ understands Leicestershire is likely to get a hub hospital later in the process.

The first batch of 800,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine has arrived in the UK and some hub hospitals already have supplies, although many have declined to say whether they have had a delivery, several saying they had been told by NHS England not to comment.

Several sources said that each “hospital hub” was likely to receive only 975 doses this week — a very limited supply, which is likely to ramp up in coming weeks. NHSE has not said how the initial doses are being split between hospital hubs and primary care delivery, but infrastructure is not in place for primary care to deliver them this week.

The vaccines received so far are likely to be used for a mixture of over 80s, care home staff and NHS staff in frontline roles, depending on who can attend this week. A second dose has to be given 21 days later.

Although the NHS has ordered millions of doses, there has been uncertainty about how many will be received this year and therefore the number of people the NHS can vaccinate. Currently, the Pfizer vaccine is the only one to have been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, although others are expected to follow.

The Pfizer vaccine is supplied in batches of 975 doses and, at the moment, the NHS is unable to split this into smaller numbers, so hospitals need a critical mass of people to vaccinate to avoid wastage.

*On Thursday 10 December NHS England announced that Leicester University Hospitals Trust and Medway Foundation Trust were among 10 additional trusts to start delivering the vaccine.