RESIDENTS in a care home for older adults and their carers are first in line to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
Cllr Charles Margetts, the executive member for health, wellbeing and adult services at Wokingham Borough Council, outlined the order in which people will receive the treatment.
“As the risk of mortality from Covid-19 increases with age, prioritisation is primarily based on age,” he told fellow councillor Barrie Patman at a virtual meeting of the executive, held on Thursday, December 17.
He then shared the other eight priority categories for the first phase of inoculations: those aged 80 and over and frontline health and social care workers will be next.
Then over 75s, over 70s and clincially vulnerable, over 65s.
Following them will be people aged 16 to 64 who have underlying health conditions.
When they have been vaccinated, it will be over 60s, over 55s and then over 50s.
“It is estimated that taken together these groups represent around 99% of preventable mortality from Covid-19,” Cllr Margetts said.
“The next phase of the vaccination programme will seek to further reduce hospitalisation and provide targeted vaccination of those at high risk of exposure and/or those delivering key public services. The planning of this second phase is ongoing with more detail expected in Spring 2021.”
Cllr Patman wanted to know if moving to Tier Three would affect the process.
“It’s difficult to know because it’s only happened today,” Cllr Margetts said, adding that the council would be lobbying the Government hard for vaccination supplies and any additional support to increase testing in the borough to help drive case rates down.
Cllr Pauline Helliar-Symons (Conservative, Wokingham Without) wanted to know how residents would know they were being called to take a vaccination.
“The NHS recommends that all eligible residents should wait to be contacted for a Covid vaccination,” Cllr Margetts said. “Residents will be contacted by the local GP practice.”
This could be by telephone calls, text messages, email and printed letters.
“All residents are advised not to phone GP practices or other NHS services with general queries about when they will be able to get the COVID vaccine,” he said.
Cllr Helliar-Symons then asked if residents were registered with a GP in another borough if the process would be the same.
“I would imagine they will be following the same principles … I see no reason to believe that Berkshire would be any different.”
The leader of the Lib Dem opposition, Cllr Lindsay Ferris (Twyford) wanted to know if additional council staff and financial support would be needed to facilitate the vaccine rollout.
“This work will be complex and it is essential that these actions are implemented in an expedite manner,” he said.
Council leader Cllr John Halsall said that since March, it has drawn on its emergency planning governance to oversee planning and delivery. At the beginning of the Covid-pandemic, it was meeting daily.
“£500,000 has been requested to support these (vaccine roll-out, contact tracing and lateral testing) initiatives and ensure they can run effectively,” he said.
“This is an important step and will mean that care home residents in the borough could have face-to-face contact with loved ones before Christmas.
“We will be one of the first boroughs in the UK to undertake a pilot of this kind and a tremendous amount of efforts has gone into its organisation. To be able to facilitate a rapid testing programme and enable residents to visit care homes before, during and after the festive period is extremely rewarding.”
He concluded by saying: “I will always endeavour to be open and transparent in how we support our residents and will happily commit to giving regular updates.”
Cllr Ferris wanted to know if any grants had come from the Government to support the £500,000 funding, but Cllr Halsall said it was difficult to answer
“The government has given grants and said that’s your lot until March 22,” Cllr Halsall replied. “The current presumption is that we’re not going to get any more money but I suspect that will change because of the new lateral flow testing for schools which .. is going to require a huge amount of resource to do it properly.
“At the moment the answer’s no, but I suspect the future answer will be yes.”
Cllr Laura Blumenthal (Conservative, South Lake) wanted to know where residents could found out the latest Covid-19 case data for the borough.
Cllr Margetts pointed her to the Public Health for Berkshire Covid Dashboard, which features live updates from government data sources.
Cllr Abdul Loyes (Conservative, Loddon ward) asked the executive member for finance about the impact that spending £500,000 would have on the council’s purse.
“The latest Revenue Monitoring (report) I will be presenting at the Executive in January will show we have managed to turnaround the projected overspend due to Covid-19, and while there is more to do, there is every prospect of a final outturn on or around budget, even after the impact of the pandemic,” Cllr John Kaiser replied.
