4,000+ vaccinations completed as Leighton Buzzard PCN starts contacting next priority groups for Covid jab

An on-duty team of volunteers, including members of Leighton Linslade Rotary Club, spent Sunday morning battling the elements to help ensure the snow didn’t stop people receiving their injections.

Rotary member and Leighton Buzzard councillor Brian Spurr also arranged a visit of a Central Beds Council gritter to help clear access to the site.

A Leighton Buzzard Primary Care Network spokesman confirmed to the LBO this lunchtime (Monday) that the 4,000 mark had been reached and that the next priority groups were now being contacted as the vast majority of the over 80s, plus care home residents and staff had been vaccinated.

He said: “We still have a little work to undertake to ensure that the patients in these two groups that we were unable to vaccinate, for various reasons, are followed up in the next few days to achieve 100% coverage.

“We are now contacting the next two groups of patients aged 70 and over; and those patients who are extremely vulnerable. As usual, each practice will be contacting patients in these groups. As the new groups are much larger than the first group, we ask patients to bear with us whilst we contact them.

“The snowfall on Sunday was a challenge to us but, through good planning, we still managed to vaccinate nearly 400 patients. Credit goes to our magnificent volunteers who worked tirelessly to clear the car park and assist patients from their cars to the centre. Thanks also go to the town council and Central Beds Council who gritted the car park for us.”

The centre – a jointly run service by all three general practices in the town (Bassett Road Surgery, Leighton Road Surgery and Salisbury House Surgery) – launched on Thursday, January 14.