Paxman, advice from NHS England to vaccine sites for this coming week has been that the national booking site is no longer available to unpaid carers who aren’t registered as such with their GP, so already having this flagged on their record.
There was fraud regarding this. Now unregistered unpaid carers are instead asked to contact their GP. The receptionist presumably, will ask some questions to se if they are eligible and if so they will allow them to access vaccination via the GP led local services.
I think the same is true for anyone who is in a job such as care worker who isn’t already flagged.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is because there’s a about to be a rollout to younger people via the national system and to all upper 40s for instance. I think that the mass centres and national booking system simply don’t have much vaccine for 1st doses in the upcoming week and so are controlling the number of bookings. It also means those that do get made as 1st doses are genuinely eligible rather than fraud cases.
The NHS England advice from last Thursday also tells GP services and mass centres that if they have more vaccine needed than required for over 50s and group 6, rather than expand to under 40s they should first pull forward 2nd dose appointments. I am hearing of lots of older people being called for their 2nd dose now about 10 days to 2 weeks before they expected it around the 11 week mark.
It strikes me that perhaps the delay in incoming doses is more serious than initially thought or we have been told. They would rather get a bit ahead with 2nd doses than fail their 12 week deadline for those, and by getting ahead have a bit more leeway in coming weeks. Once they open to Phase 2 officially (and I know lots of areas have already called some over 40s...but it’s often been with fairly short notice and to specific slots, not via the general booking systems) it will be hard to stop it without it looking like a big climb down. At the moment, it hasn’t offically started, plus the official date for completing phase 1 still has anothe 10 days, giving them a bit of wriggle room.
I know it’s not what all the upper 40s who felt it was so close and then whipped away want to hear, especially when they hear of some areas giving the over 40s it. However, I feel any official rollout won’t come until at least 15th. Probably at that point they will have to actually say something more about phase 10 and moving to Over 40s and either say there is a delay, or that they are still doing phase 1 mop up, or give some other explanation. Hopefully by then there will be more and they can rollout, but I wonder if it will be May. Hope I’m wrong.