Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2020
There are a lot of questions there, as Ms Lennon rightly said. I will write to Ms Lennon on some of those, as I will to other members, because there is a lot of detail.
We are ready. We hope that we will receive the first of the 320,000 doses that we expect in December in the first week of December, and we will be ready to begin the vaccination programme in that week.
National training is under way. We are already deploying some of the cohort of our flu vaccinators to this work because the flu programme is well under way. Some will deploy over and the rest will be deployed further once the flu programme is completed.
We are recruiting, but our clinical expertise extends beyond the medical and nursing professions into dentistry, optometry, and pharmacy. We have already had positive discussions with those professions about their members wanting to be part of this national exercise, and looking at the shifts that they can sign up for—we do not expect this to be a nine-to-five operation or a Monday-to-Friday operation—so that they can continue to deliver their core service and undertake vaccinations in addition. That is why we are in discussions about terms and conditions for that extra work.
The armed forces will do a great deal of the logistical work but, again, our partnership with local authorities and local resilience partners will help us to identify locations and to ensure that they are Covid-safe. Our national procurement service on personal protective equipment will ensure delivery of the right level of PPE to all locations, and that the mobile units carry it with them.