GPs may have to close practices to safely give vaccines 

A GP who was refused permission to use a church to administer Covid-19 vaccines said the vaccination programme could push non-Covid care back yet again.

Patients at just over 100 GP practices will start vaccinating over-85s this week.

However, as anyone receiving the Pfizer vaccine must sit for 15 minutes after receiving the jab, GPs say it will not be possible to do any other care on those days.

When Dr Illona Duffy added up her patient numbers, starting with 140 over-85s, she contacted her local church to explore the possibility of running a clinic there.

She said: “You can see the church from our practice, there are rows of pews, separated by an aisle, there are two doors for going in and out, parking.

“To do all of this in our surgery, we figure we can do 14 in an hour. 

We had planned to do up to 60 an hour in the local church with extra people coming in to help.

"We could get them all done in a half-day."

When she alerted the HSE and the Irish Medical Organisation to the possibility for the enhanced roll-out at the church, she was refused permission.

“The IMO has said to us you can’t do the vaccines off-site,” she said.

She is now resigned to closing the practice on vaccination days and said GPs attending a webinar for the region on Tuesday echoed her fears.

"As this rolls on, you are looking at weeks giving the second vaccine to this group of over-85s, and then as you go down the groups, there are larger numbers. It has much more impact than on the day."

These challenges will particularly impact mid-to-large size practices among the 1,373 GP practices.

Named sites

The terms of the deal between the HSE and the IMO specify in-surgery or GP-led vaccination hubs on named sites only.

These hub, like the one on the Munster Technological University campus, are only in Cork, Dublin, and Galway and are only available to practices with fewer than 200 over-70s.

Dr Duffy is head of the North East Doctors On Call (NEDOC) out-of-hours-service and said this rules out weekend vaccinations because she and her colleagues are already working.

One of those colleagues is her 85-year old father Eamonn who delayed his retirement again when the pandemic hit.

Ultimately, about 490,000 over-70s will be involved in this roll-out, receiving individual texts or phone calls to book their vaccines.

“The IT system is not yet up and running, we will be logging onto that when it’s ready," Dr Duffy said.

The consent forms are on paper, they have to be really with this group.

She knows her patients will not stand for any delays, as they watch their neighbours get vaccinated in Northern Ireland.

Nurses in a nearby practice in Co Tyrone vaccinated about 120 elderly patients in a day, she said.

“It’s so different, they are giving AstraZeneca there so patients come in, get the vaccine and walk out again. It’s considered safe for this group there,” she said.