Another day another 400 Vaccines!

Today’s team were Judy, Louisa, Val and Mel all starting at 4pm through to 8pm closing time. It was another beautiful afternoon with patients very happy to queue in the sunshine. It was lovely to see Louisa and Val in person after some weeks since the start of this current lockdown. Today was the first day that the Marquee was being used and this had been made very homely with flowers, boom box and a lovely muted lit ambience. The vaccines being used were Astra Zeneca/Oxford in the morning and the Pfizer vaccine in the afternoon which meant a busier time getting them through to the treatment rooms due to the required post vaccine 15 minutes waiting time. On arrival, and after testing, we were allocated our task areas - Mel was in the arrivals waiting room keeping tabs on who could join the queue for the treatment rooms coupled with cleaning seats where ‘X’ marked the spot, moving to the back gate for the last hour which as it got colder and darker felt a little like being sent to Siberia until Ellie came over bringing conversation and a very welcome cuppa. Judy and Val were outside in the car park and back door respectively and Louisa too helped bring patients from the treatment rooms into the departure waiting room after receiving their vaccine. Judy did have a stint taking temperatures of arriving patients but due to too many ‘hairy ears’, decided this wasn’t for her, preferring to be outside and playing with the traffic in the car park. We were delighted to see Lynn coming through the surgery, but this time as a patient getting her vaccine and she even got a cuppa from Val’s flask, although after Val told her it was decaff tea responded with “well you can’t have everything!” There was also a lady who managed to find her way into the Marquee pre-vaccine, waited for 30 minutes before asking when she would receive her vaccine and needed to be taken back round to the front entrance so that she could follow the correct routing. We still don’t know how she managed to slip through with 2 people on the back gate whose job it was to prevent this happening! The session seemed to fly by and at 8pm we all signed out and went on our way until next time.