Julian visits Haxby pharmacy vaccination centre
March 31, 2021
On Saturday morning, Julian visited the vaccination centre set up by York pharmacy group Citywide Health on The Village in Haxby, to see the important role smaller sites are playing in the covid vaccine effort.
Open since 25th February, the site has injected over 8000 patients during the last 4 weeks. Situated in a residential area, the centre is easier to access for many residents than the large Askham Bar mass vaccination site, especially for older people, and those with health or mobility issues.
With this pharmacy model successful, Citywide Health are now looking to extend the vaccination service to all 7 of their York pharmacy sites.
Julian witnessed the last day of the centre administering a consignment of AstraZeneca vaccine sent back from the European Union due to vaccine hesitancy, which enabled the site to triple its normal vaccination rate, operating for 12 consecutive days to get through the batch of doses, covering all residents aged 50-plus.
After the visit, Julian said:
“It was incredibly reassuring to see the Citywide pharmacy team at work protecting Haxby residents, making good use of doses of the life-saving Astra vaccine bizarrely rejected by European citizens.
The centre seems really well-run and effective, and this friendly, small-scale community service usefully complements the work of bigger sites like Askham Bar, where Citywide’s staff have already been assisting with vaccination.
The pharmacy group and magnificent local volunteers deserve huge praise for making this service available, and are making a serious contribution to protecting our city. I will certainly keep in mind the lessons about the value of this delivery model, as vaccination, and potentially adjusting vaccination in line with the behaviour of the virus, is the only route back to normality, down which we are now thankfully travelling at a steady pace.”
