Coronavirus: Vaccinations

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Please do not contact the surgery with queries regarding the Covid-19 vaccination. We will be contacting patients as soon as we know more from NHS England as to who is eligible to invite for vaccination. 

The five Ramsgate practices, Dashwood, East Cliff, The Grange, Newington and Summerhill are working together to deliver the vaccine programme. Between the five practices we care for over 51,000 patients across Ramsgate.

The Montefiore Medical Centre which houses both East Cliff and the Grange practices has been designated as the main vaccine site for Ramsgate.

• Patients of Dashwood, East Cliff and Summerhill will be offered a vaccination at East Cliff Surgery. 
• Patients of The Grange and Newington will be offered a vaccination at The Grange Surgery.

We are inviting patients based on the national priority list. Please be patient and wait to be contacted by your own surgery about when the vaccine is available for you. (See below). There will be home visits arranged for housebound patients.

Please read the questions and answers below about our local vaccination service. Our phone lines are very busy; please help us to keep lines open for people needing to make appointments for other health matters.

Which priority group are you currently inviting?

As of the 1st February:

We have completed vaccinating all residents in Ramsgate living in a care home for older adults along with their carers. 

We have vaccinated around 89% of patients aged 80 years of age and over and have offered a vaccination to all patients in this group.

Frontline health and social care workers registered at one of the practices are advised to follow guidance from their employer and attend hospital hub sites for vaccination in the first instance.  

We have vaccinated 69% of patients aged 75 or over and are continuing to vaccinate this group.

We are now inviting and vaccinating everyone aged over 70 and patients who are considered clinically extremely vulnerable 

Within the Montefiore Medical Centre we have already administered 5,580 vaccines with further clinics planned for Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. We are aiming to have invited all over 70's for a vaccination by the 14th February.

We are in discussion with other Thanet practices about developing a central vaccine hub in the centre of Thanet with a view to increasing the number of vaccinations we are able to offer patients but our priority will be to offer patients the choice of having their vaccination at the practice or at the central Thanet hub. 

You may separately be contacted by NHS England offering the option of travelling even further for a vaccination. We are aware that letters have gone out offering the option of attending a centre in Folkestone and that other centres are being planned in other parts of Kent. In some instances some patients have been invited to attend a centre as far away as Swindon which we understand has been sent out in error. Rest assured we are doing all we can to safely administer as many vaccines locally as we can and to continue to offer you a local option for vaccination.

How are you contacting people to invite them for a vaccine?

We are telephoning patients in the first instance, this allows us to ask some screening questions and explain arrangements at the appointment and answer any questions.

If I cannot attend an appointment what should I do?

If you have received and accepted an invitation for a Covid-19 vaccine we would strongly encourage you to prioritise coming to the appointment. If for unavoidable reasons you cannot make it please call your practice to cancel so that we can invite someone else.

Why is this process so complicated?

Please be assured we are prioritising this programme and committing all available staff to this effort as well as recruiting bank staff and volunteers. All of these staff need to be screened and trained. A significant proportion of staff are working extra hours to ensure this programme runs smoothly.

We are dependent upon vaccine supply. At the moment this is centrally decided and we only receive notification of delivery a few days in advance making it challenging to plan clinics. We administer the vast majority of vaccine stock we receive within two days of them arriving at the surgery. If more stock were available we would increase our efforts to vaccinate more people sooner.

This is not like a flu vaccination programme. There are distinct differences in how the different vaccines are managed and handled.  Typically with flu vaccines we receive prefilled syringes. The Covid Vaccines come in vials and require careful handling and drawing up into syringes meaning the process takes longer.

Additionally with the Pfizer vaccine, patients are required to wait 15 minutes after their vaccination meaning we have a slower flow of patients through the clinics.

All practices remain open and we are having to manage the same daily workload alongside running the vaccination programme.

What is the order of patients you are vaccinating? 

We cannot at this stage give an idea of timescale for contacting patients but we will be working through the priority groups set out by the Department of Health and Social Care below these are:

1. Residents in a care home for older adults and their carers (Complete)

2. All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers (Nearly complete)

3. All those 75 years of age and over (In progress)

4. All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals (In progress)

5. All those 65 years of age and over (Due to start mid February)

6. All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality (Not yet started)

7. All those 60 years of age and over (Not yet started)

8. All those 55 years of age and over (Not yet started)

9. All those 50 years of age and over (Not yet started)

We will update this website when we have further news.