More than 43% over 18s in Flintshire boosted against COVID-19

More than 43% of the adults in Flintshire are now boosted against COVID-19 after the programme was accelerated this week to offer the jab to everyone aged over 18.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has said it is “confident” that booster jabs will be made available to all eligible adults in North Wales by December 31.

Data from the UK Health Security Agency shows a booster vaccine increases protection against symptomatic infection from the Omicron variant to around 70%.

Minister for health in Wales, Eluned Morgan has said: “Increasing the rollout of our booster program to maximise protection is now the number one priority for the NHS in Wales.”

During a press conference earlier this week, she said: “We’ve been working with health boards since the (last) weekend to make changes to the vaccination program to go further and to go faster.”

“And this will mean the focus of the NHS will need to shift towards vaccinating people for a short time.”

“The NHS will continue to provide essential services emergency and urgent care, but we will be redeploying all available clinical staff to vaccination centres.”

“We’ll be asking them to work in existing mass vaccination centres, which will be expanded to their maximum capacity and also in new centres.”

“Many of the centres will be expanded to have dedicated walk-in lanes and we’ll be targeting these walk-in slots of particular groups of people.”

First minister Mark Drakeford said on Friday that at the moment “things are calm but we see the storm brewing, Omicron is already here in Wales and everything we are learning tells us that once that storm begins to gather, we will see that wave come into Wales very quickly and rise very sharply. We have to prepare for that now.”

BCUHB has administered over 240,000 booster doses so far but to achieve the target of offering all eligible adults in North Wales a top-up jab by the end of December, it will have to increase the vaccination rate by around 12,000 a day.

More than 54,400 people aged over 18 in Flintshire have now received a top-up jab according to Public Health Wales data (up to Wednesday 15 December.)

Just over 89% of people in Flintshire have had the first dose of a Covid vaccine, 86.5% a second dose, which is higher than the Wales average figures of 87.5% and 84.7% respectively.

Data also shows that of the 125,439 eligible adults in Flintshire, 13,520 (10.8%) have chosen not to have a first dose of a Covid vaccine.

The age group with the lowest level of the first dose take up in Flintshire is the 30-39-year-olds at 79.2% – of the 19,794 people within this age group, 4,119 have not had the first dose of a Covid vaccine.

Online booking

BCUHB was the first health board in Wales to launch online bookings for the vaccine booster jab and is also sending texts and letters to people informing them of their appointments.

The new system means people can now book a booster jab at a large number of locations across North Wales, locally appointments can be made at Deeside Leisure Centre, Buckley Medical Centre, The Quay Health Centre, Hope Family Medical Centre and Pendre Surgery in Mold.

Anyone who does not yet have an appointment, is over 18 years of age and it has been at least three months since their second Covid vaccination, a booster jab can be booked here: COVID-19 online booking – Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (nhs.wales)

Members of the Armed Forces are being deployed across Wales to support the Covid booster vaccine ramp up.

98 personnel have been made available to support the Covid-19 booster programme in Wales.

Armed Forces will be working to support the Department of Health and Welsh Government to accelerate the vaccine rollout amid a wave of Omicron infections.

The personnel will make up 14 teams of vaccinators who will provide surge support to increase capacity.

They will deploy to all seven Health Boards in Wales, with two teams assigned to each board.