Agenda item

Liz Brutus, Consultant in Public Health (Health Improvement), will provide a presentation on Southwark Council’s Lateral Flow Testing Rollout. A briefing is attached.

A presentation on the vaccination programme is attached and along with a presentation on insights to build confidence.

Vaccine rollout

Sam Hepplewhite, Director of Integrated Commissioning, Southwark NHS, gave a presentation on vaccine rollout. The chair then invited questions and the following points were made: 

·  Sam Hepplewhite confirmed that cohort 4 is the over 70s and people who are clinically extremely vulnerable.

·  Councillors have been contacted by people concerned that they will miss communication for their vaccine appointment as many do not have a mobile phone to receive a text and in some areas the post is unreliable. Sam Hepplewhite said that GPs will use multiple ways to contact people, including ringing landlines.

·  Some people have received duplicate vaccine invitations from their GPs, local hospitals and the national programme based at the Excel because of different lists being used by different institutions, which have not yet been integrated.  There will be multiple invitations until the process is coordinated, however the NHS believe more is better , as there is only a small risk people will have more than one vaccination , which is in any case not a health risk.

·  The vaccine refusal rate is declining – and some people may change their mind and decide to be vaccinated later down the line. So far 71% of over 80s are receiving the vaccine.

·  Cohorts may get done in different orders depending on geography as the priority is speed of distribution. Southwark were ready before Bromley so will move onto new cohorts once top priority people are vaccinated.

·  The second dose has been set aside for 12 weeks, and this will come before some cohorts are given their first jab.

·  The Excel centre is run nationally and the criterion is living within a 40 minute travel time.

·  There is not an open access list for vaccines left over. There is a list of NHS staff members who can come in at short notice so no vaccine is wasted.

·  London has given out all the vaccines received.

·  People who have received the vaccine will get a card and a sticker.

RESOLVED

Sam Hepplewhite undertook to respond to councillors regarding any community concerns generally and with more details on how GPs will be contacting vaccine candidates in particular.

Lateral Flow tests

Liz Brutus, Consultant in Public Health (Health Improvement), provided a presentation on Southwark Council’s Lateral Flow Testing Rollout. The chair then invited questions:

·  The Damilola Taylor Youth Centre is being used for testing. Members raised concerns about people having to travel long distances by bus and place themselves at more risk of Covid, in order to test and asked if  there was a possibility of using local pharmacies as test locations, particularly as some local ones are keen .Liz Brutus said local pharmacies are being encouraged to provide ‘expressions of interest’ to deliver tests. One of the challenges of rolling out testing from local pharmacies are the financial issues of breaking even. However officers do want to open up testing across the borough.

·  Officers have scoped out a space in Southwark Park, which is north of the borough. Once teething problems with Damilola Taylor Youth Centre have been ironed out they will likely make a decision shortly to proceed.

·  Members asked why private company Trojan were appointed to deliver Lateral Flow tests, instead of council officers or NHS staff, and if a fair commissioning process was used?  Officers said that they did consider redeploying council staff however the time scale were very short so instead an open tendering process was used to appoint Trojan.