A pop-up coronavirus vaccine centre has been set up to try and address low vaccination uptake in one part of Bolton.
There is currently an uptake of just 76pc from patients registered in Bolton's central primary care area, according to figures released by Bolton's Clinical Commissioning Group.
That figure is in contrast to other primary care districts such as Turton, where 95pc of those offered the jab have attended, and Westhoughton, where the figure is 93pc.
In Horwich, 93pc of those invited have attended for vaccination, the figure in Breightmet and Little Lever is 92pc, and for the Chorley Roads area there is a 91pc uptake.
In Farnworth, Kearsley, Rumworth and Halliwell, 89pc of those eligible have been vaccinated.
A pop-up clinic has now been set up at Pikes Lane Centre, for eligible patients registered at GP practices in Deane, Daubhill, Great Lever, and the Derby Street area.
Dr Helen Wall, who leads the vaccination programme in Bolton, claimed that the lower uptake has mainly been with the borough's black African and Pakistani communities.
"There are pockets of inequality and deprivation in our central area where we have a slightly lower uptake," she said.
"We have had ethnicity data on vaccine take up from 27 practices in Bolton and at the minute our ethnicities of concern with regard to uptake are our black African community and our Pakistani communities."
Michael Smith is from Bolton’s GP Federation, which is delivering the vaccine programme for Central, Farnworth and Kearsley and Rumworth.
He told a commissioning board meeting about measures being taken to increase vaccination uptake for the central area.
He said: "What we found that there was a fairly resistant cohort of patients who simply weren’t accessing appointments.
"In some areas there was up to 30pc where practices either didn’t have an up-to-date phone number or just weren’t getting a response.
"As we tried to get behind the reasons for that we put together a team to literally go and knock on the doors.
"They were armed with information and were teams with multiple language speakers.
"We had arrangements in place where we could offer appointments that day.
"We got around 10 to 15pc booked in and that’s the kind of effort we are going to have to keep making.
"It was important to us to answer any questions and respond to any hesitancy and any misinformation out there.
"We heard from our Polish communities and our black African communities about the influence from back home, an upswell of negativity in some parts of Europe and Africa about vaccination."
Mr Smith said other measures being taken included updating communications materials to highlight urgency and ordering movable equipment to support pop-up sites.
