I received this update from Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership:

Our vaccination programme scaled up considerably this week with the launch of our large vaccination centre at Epsom Racecourse on Monday (11 January). This site is also shared with some of our GP-led vaccination services. It means significantly more people can be vaccinated and is initially focusing on people over 80 years of age and health and care workers.

Secretary of State for Health and Care, Matt Hancock and Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director also visited the launch to hear from staff and patients about the progress being made. National, regional and local media followed the action and you can see some of the highlights from BBC, Sky News, ITV, Surrey Live and over on our Twitter feed.

89 year old Moira Edwards from Epsom was first to receive her vaccine and said it was “extremely important” to get it.

We also now have all our planned GP-led services up and running and the first pharmacy vaccination site open in Guildford.

The full list of services is:

We are starting to receive more supplies of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine. As this is easier to transport it means significant progress is also being made with vaccinating care home residents and staff.

We have also been vaccinating at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford and Surrey and Sussex Hospitals in Redhill. Other NHS staff hubs will join shortly to cover all frontline health and care staff across the county. As more vaccine becomes available, we will move – where possible – to providing services 12 hours/day, 7 days/week.

Booking a vaccination

If you are aged over 80 you may have received a letter from NHS England inviting you for a vaccine at a larger vaccination centre which is located up to 45 minutes from your home. This is part of the national booking system. On receipt of this letter an appointment can be made online or by calling 119. Find out more. You may also be contacted by your local GP Network. These appointments will be available in a community setting and could be closer to home. We would recommend that you take an appointment as soon as possible – this may be at a local GP-led service.

Those over 80s who haven’t been contacted yet will be invited soon; they won’t be missed out.

We will then expand the programme to further cohorts, starting with the over 75s. All vaccination sites will keep you safe from COVID-19 through a range of measures including cleaning and disinfecting and having social distancing in waiting areas.

Please also wear a face covering to your appointment.

Help us to help you :

• Please do not contact your GP practice or the wider NHS to seek a vaccine, we will contact you (if you haven’t heard yet, we haven’t forgotten you)
• When we do contact you, please attend your booked appointments
• Please do not arrive too early for your vaccination appointment to help us maintain social distancing measures

New support centre to manage enquiries

We have set up a dedicated mailbox and telephone line to manage enquiries – the email address is: syheartlandsccg.vaccination@nhs.net

The phone number will go live on Monday and details will be published on our website (www.surreyheartlandsccg.nhs.uk) and in our next update.