All care home residents and staff across Sittingbourne have now received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

The milestone comes less than two weeks after the town's Age UK centre opened as a vaccination hub.

Dr Shaun Potter, practice manager of The Chestnuts Surgery in Sittingbourne, who is leading the hub, said: "It's going really well. We have given the first dose to all our care home residents in the area and staff members.

"The guidance from the government is that by February 18, we have to achieve that target. So we are ahead."

He added: "In terms of the whole cohort, with the vaccination hub and the care homes, we are not far off of having vaccinated 5,000 patients.

"We have now done the over-80s, they are completed with their first doses - apart from those who had Covid at the time or those who didn't turn up, but we have rebooked them back in.

"Now we have started on the 75-80 age bracket. We started those yesterday. This week, next week and a little bit of the next week we will get through that group and move onto those over 70."

Dr Potter said the hub's aim is to administer about 600 jabs each day.

Despite the success, there were complaints yesterday after scores of elderly people had to wait in long queues outside the Avenue of Remembrance centre before they received their jabs.

When asked why there had been queues, Dr Potter said: "We increased to three vaccinators yesterday and we ramped up our appointment slots because of the amount of vaccines we had delivered.

"We were vaccinating three patients per minute, so we could use the stock and not waste any of the vaccines, which have a limited shelf life.

"Also with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is what we mainly had yesterday, patients don't have to wait around in recovery for 15 minutes afterwards to see if they have any side effects, so we thought we'd increase the flow to get more patients vaccinated.

"Before then, we had been working to two patients a minute and that worked nicely. So we were busier yesterday and it, unfortunately, caused a bottleneck but we are trying to balance things."

Dr Potter said after the queuing issue, the hub has changed back to jabbing two patients a minute.

"The flow is much simpler and it's a lot easier to manage at two a minute," he said. "And today it's gone back to normal. We haven't had any reported issues with queues at all."

He added: "In general, it's going well. We have had a few glitches here and there but we are adapting.

"The biggest thing is to ask patients to bear with us. We will get to everybody, it just takes time and no-one is being forgotten whatsoever."

The vaccination hub also came under fire this week for offering the vaccine to teachers in the town, ahead of others.

But, Dr Potter explained the hub has a reserve list of key workers at hand so that no vaccine is thrown in the bin at the end of each day.

"We did trial the reserve list with patients and we found that when we called them quite late in the day, they didn't want to come down to the centre or, if they did, and we said can you get down in half an hour's time, they couldn't because they had no transport at such short notice.

"That's why we have put other key workers, teachers, firefighters and police officers on the list. It isn't queue jumping in any way.

"The reason for it is we can't get elderly people here in time and we don't want to waste the vaccines.

"When you have got so many people that need it or who are eligible for it, it would be absolutely crazy if we had to throw any away.

"The vaccine is so sought after across the UK at the moment, so every single shot we get is worth a fortune, especially as it's potentially saving a patient's life."

Dr Potter said the reserve list had worked really well and the hub has not yet had to bin a single vaccine.

However, one problem it is having is with jab deliveries.

Last week, the hub was told it had a delivery of the Pfizer vaccines coming, but it didn't arrive.

"It meant we couldn't open the clinic for a day," Dr Potter said. "We didn't have to cancel any appointments as we hadn't got round to inviting people in for that day, but if the stock doesn't come, we can't open."

He added: "One of my biggest bugbears with the deliveries is the short notice. We get 24 hours.

"We don't have that much time to contact patients and get them in, and arranging clinical staff and extra cover is such hard work.

"A lot of these staff are working in surgeries, they are doing extra hours on top of their day jobs and the deliveries being late or changed is a nightmare for us. So far we haven't had to cancel any appointments, but it is a risk."

Dr Potter said since opening, the centre has had less than 15 DNAs - patients who did not attend.

"If people can't make it, for whatever reason, we use that slot for someone else."

However, he said he was "surprised" that some people had declined the offer of the vaccine.

"The uptake is good, it's very good," he said. "But we have had a small minority that have declined it and I am surprised as it could potentially save their life."

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