I spent Sunday volunteering at a vaccination centre, and I’m seriously worried that some vaccination hubs are at risk of becoming superspreader sites.
The day began at a youth centre. All the volunteers took lateral flow tests, which all came out negative. These detect Covid-19 in only half of asymptomatic people but they are better than nothing. However, once we got into the building, my heart sank.
The whole operation was set up in an indoor basketball court. Half of it was dedicated to vaccinations and the other half was full of blue plastic chairs. There were large windows, but if they could be opened, they weren’t. The only source of ventilation were the doors in and out.
The blue chairs were not quite two metres apart and when we started bringing people in, it got worse.
The NHS guidance says that people should wear surgical masks when coming into the vaccine centre. On the surface, this seems sensible. It is because we don’t know if people have been washing their cloth masks frequently enough. In practice, this means asking elderly people, many with arthritis, to very slowly change masks indoors, surrounded by other vulnerable people.
Once in a centre, a patient goes through four stages. First, the patient queues as someone makes sure they are eligible to join the next queue. Second, they queue to be registered. Third, they queue to be vaccinated. Then, after being vaccinated, they sit and are observed. Each of these queues are rows of chairs, because we cannot expect everyone from the 80+ cohort to stand for too long. Most of these chairs were about a metre and a half from each other.
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