Our Autumn Flu and COVID vaccination clinics are available to book now!

Our first Flu and COVID clinic will be on Saturday 16^th September 2023, we will be offering double vaccination (Flu/COVID) clinics at Callington and Gunnislake Health Centres every Saturday until the end of October (last clinic 28^th October 2023).

Tamar Valley Health have thousands of patients to vaccinate this season and we have a deadline to complete this work. Due to staffing, routine practice clinics and general workload we need to ensure our seasonal vaccination clinics are as efficient and effective as possible. Additionally, we must ensure our patients are vaccinated as soon as possible.

Due to these reasons, we will be running our clinics as double vaccination clinics, as per government guidance. Both vaccines have been approved to be given together.

If you do not want the flu and COVID vaccinations together, you will be booked into the single vaccination clinics in mid/ late October and will need to attend twice to be vaccinated against both influenza and COVID.

Booking an appointment

• Our phone lines for these vaccination appointments will be open from 10:00 – 12:00 and 14:00 – 16:00, this is to ensure we are still able to take our regular on the day phone calls from patients who need to see or speak to a clinician.
• Our staff may offer to book you an appointment whilst you are on the phone discussing other matters if you are eligible.
• We will also be sending our invitations via text message which will include a link to booking an appointment.
• You can also head to our website and click on Reception and Enquiries then “ask a receptionist a question”, send us your availability and we will book you an appointment and confirm this with you.

Eligibility

We, as a practice do not decide eligibility for the COVID and Flu vaccination programmes. The government and NHS England have decided that the following patient groups will be entitled to receive a COVID/ and or FLU vaccination in 2023/24 season:

Eligible for a Flu Vaccine:

• those aged 65 years and over
• those aged 6 months to under 65 years in clinical risk groups (as defined by the Green Book, chapter 19 (Influenza))
• pregnant women
• all children aged 2 or 3 years on 31 August 2023
• primary school aged children (from Reception to Year 6)
• those in long-stay residential care homes ^{[footnote 1]}
• carers in receipt of carer’s allowance, or those who are the main carer of an elderly or disabled person
• close contacts of immunocompromised individuals
• frontline workers in a social care setting without an employer led occupational health scheme including those working for a registered residential care or nursing home, registered domiciliary care providers, voluntary managed hospice providers and those that are employed by those who receive direct payments (personal budgets) or Personal Health budgets, such as Personal Assistants

Eligible for a Covid Booster:

• Residents in care homes for older adults
• All adults aged 65 years and over
• People aged 6 months to 64 years in a clinical risk group, as defined in tables 3 and 4 of the Covid-19 chapter of the UKHSA Green Book on Immunisation
• frontline health and social care workers.
• People aged 12 to 64 years who are household contacts of people with immunosuppression, as defined in the UKHSA Green Book
• People aged 16 to 64 years who are carers, as defined in the UKHSA Green Book, and staff working in care homes for older adults

If you are not eligible for the seasonal vaccinations listed above, we can offer you a Influenza vaccination privately at a small cost, please ring the surgery after the 17^th September to enquire and book an appointment.

We cannot offer the COVID vaccination privately.

Housebound patients

We can recognise if patients are housebound as we code them as such on our clinical system. You do not need to ring us to confirm your housebound status unless you are temporarily housebound (recent operation or disability) or have recently become housebound.

Some patients have requested housebound visits for vaccinations but have not been at home when we have visited, this causes delays to other housebound and vulnerable patients, whilst also wasting practice resources. If you are able to attend one of the vaccination sites or have family/ friend support to enable you to visit one of the vaccination sites, we would appreciate it.

If you are housebound and have not heard from us regarding a home visit by mid-October, please contact the surgery for further information and to check when your visit is scheduled.

Child flu vaccinations

Our first Child (nasal spray) Flu clinic will be on Saturday 30^th September 2023.

We can off this to the following cohorts:

• children aged 2 or 3 years on 31 August 2023
• children in a clinical risk group

School aged children will be offered the Influenza vaccination at school (we do not arrange these so are not able to publish the dates). If your child misses having this at school, unfortunately we are not able to vaccinate them and you will need to contact the school immunisation team on 01872 221105 to arrange an appointment at one of their catch up clinics.

Private flu vaccinations

Do you want to be protected from FLU this winter?

If you are NOT in an eligible cohort but would like to be vaccinated, we are offering Private Flu vaccinations through our Gunnislake Pharmacy – payable on the day.

We have limited appointments available AM and PM during the week and we will be offering bookable/walk-in appointments for private flu vaccinations on the following Saturdays:

Callington Health Centre

• Saturday 16th September
• Saturday 23rd September
• Saturday 30th September
• Saturday 7th October
• Saturday 14th October
• Saturday 21st October

Gunnislake Health Centre

• Saturday 30th September
• Saturday 7th October
• Saturday 21st October