Brighton finally got its first vaccination centre with the facility opening this week.
Weeks after seeing sites open nationwide, The Brighton Centre now forms one of 32 locations across the country that began operations on Monday (25th January) by offering treatments to healthcare and social care staff, before inviting priority patients currently eligible from Tuesday onwards.
Those who do qualify are asked to wait until they receive their letters rather than showing up, with the NHS having already begun posting out to people aged 80 and over whose postcode is covered by the sites.
This is welcome news to the city, as it joins Brighton Racecourse, Portslade Health Centre, St Augustine’s Community Centre and the County Oak Medical centre as locations currently providing jabs across the Brighton and Hove district.
Current figures for the area suggest that the reduction in cases is continuing with the rate of infection dropping from 624.3 per 100,000 people down to 413.2, a shift of over a third.
This evidence has been supported by Alistair Hill, Brighton’s director of public health, who believes that this drastic decrease in the number of local cases supported by the ongoing roll out of the vaccine means that residents have lots of reasons to be optimistic of soon seeing restrictions begin to lift.
The opening of this site will also provide much better ease of use, as the four priority groups will now be able to arrange their injections via the central booking system, rather than going through their local GP where they must wait to be contacted instead of managing the process themselves.
Available scope is also greatly increased as anyone within 60 miles of the facility will receive an invite before making the choice to travel or decide to wait.
The NHS in Sussex expects that now thanks to this new service, all frontline key workers and residents over 80 will have been seen by mid-February, with the population of care homes already believed to have been successfully treated.
