15th December 2021
Dear Colleague
We need your help.
Local health and care partners are responding to the latest government announcement to give booster COVID vaccinations to all eligible adults who want one by the end of December. We have already undertaken over 220,000 vaccinations across our community but now plan to increase this significantly and deliver more per day than ever before.
The speed of spread of the new Omicron variant is very concerning and appears to be doubling every 2-3 days. This means that within just a few weeks there will be a very high peak of positive cases. This would mean people in isolation, or caring for those that are, would put additional enormous pressure on health and social care in terms of workforce and likely lead to more patients being admitted with severe disease.
The third booster jab appears to provide much improved protection than just two jabs against severe disease from this new highly transmissible variant. We are therefore encouraging all our staff, local citizens and patients to Get Boosted! as soon as possible to ensure we can keep our local community and local services safe.
How can you help?
As part of this campaign we are urgently seeking the support of volunteers to work with our local Primary Care Network (PCN) vaccination teams. We have three PCNs within Bassetlaw. Newgate PCN is based at Newgate Medical Centre (Worksop), Larwood and Bawtry PCN is based at Kilton Forest Community Centre (Worksop), and Retford and Villages PCN is based at Retford Hospital (Retford). All three PCNs are asking for help with a range of tasks which support the delivery of the vaccination service. We have developed a simple questionnaire for volunteers to complete which will enable us to quickly identify what support individuals are able to offer. The questionnaire can be found via the following link and should only take about 5mins to complete:
We ask that the questionnaire responses are completed URGENTLY so that we can progress with developing rotas for our PCN teams as soon as possible. Local teams will be in contact with volunteers via the contact details provided to confirm allocations into available clinics. Please bear with us whilst we progress with this process – our busy teams will endeavour to respond to the generous offers of help as soon as they can.
Volunteers already working to support our vaccination services through BCVS and willing to offer more capacity should contact BCVS directly.
For organisations wishing to engage in this volunteering campaign and consider the option of staff group volunteering please feel free to contact v.mcgregorriley@nhs.net
We recognise the ongoing sacrifices that many of our local volunteers have already made to support our COVID response and enable our community to remain resilient and recover from the impact of the pandemic. That shared commitment, to keep our community as safe as possible, is what drives us to ask once more for your help in this drive to increase the uptake of vaccinations.
Kindest regards
Dr Eric Kelly
Chair Bassetlaw Clinical Commissioning Group
Mr Dave Armiger
Chief Executive Bassetlaw District Council
Chair Bassetlaw Place Partnership