Half of Trafford’s population has now had both doses of their covid vaccine

Almost half of Trafford’s adult population has now had both their first and second dose of the covid-19 vaccine.

The borough has been pushing ahead with its jab programme and the director for public health, Eleanor Roaf, hopes that it will ‘expand quickly’ to include younger people soon.

(Huddersfield Examiner)

At a public engagement board meeting, Sara Radcliffe of Trafford Clinical Commissioning Group gave an update to Trafford council.

She said: “Everyone’s been working really, really hard. We’re now at close to 50pc of the population having had their first and second vaccination. That’s really good news for us.

“In those top nine [vulnerability] cohorts, we’re now at around 88pc of members of those groups have been vaccinated, so again that’s really good news for those people who are most in need.

“Obviously there has been a lot in the media about the Astra Zeneca vaccine and there has been some concern shown but we’ve been trying to actually talk to people about that, particularly those at clinical risk.”

A vaccine (AstraZeneca) being administered at a centre in West Yorkshire as Europe pauses the Johnson & Johnson roll out (Huddersfield Examiner)

Ms Radcliffe explained Trafford hasn’t had any first dose vaccine deliveries this month, but that the borough will be getting those again from Monday April 26.

From that date rolling out the vaccine to vulnerability cohorts 10 to 12 – all those aged 40 to 49 years, all those aged 30 to 39 years and all those aged 18 to 29 years.

Ms Radcliffe said health organisations across the North West are not seeing any hesitancy in these three cohorts about getting vaccinated – instead ‘people are wanting to be vaccinated’.

In Trafford two of the primary care networks (which weren’t specifically named in the meeting) will not be offering vaccines to these younger age groups.

The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine (PA)

Ms Radcliffe explained there were a number of reasons for this, including staff capacity, GPs being expected to get back to business as usual and fatigue as many staff have worked long and hard without a break for many months.

To make up for these primary care networks not offering vaccines to these cohorts, in the affected areas pharmacies will step up to fill the gap in vaccine provision.