Thanet GP urges people to get covid jabs at next walk-in clinics to help ‘life go on’

The vaccination programme

An isle GP says vaccinations are ‘key’ to making sure people can get on with life despite the increase in covid positive rates for Thanet.

Dr Ash Peshen, who leads Thanet’s GP covid vaccination clinics, is urging those not already jabbed to attend walk-in clinics at Saga this Friday and Saturday.

The clinics are for anyone aged 16 and over for their first jab and also second jabs for those who had their first vaccination eight or more weeks ago. The vaccinations will be Pfizer.

The walk-in clinics run from 8am to 5.30pm on both days (September 3-4).

Dr Peshan (centre) and vaccination staff from the GP hub at Saga

Dr Peshen said: “We have to jab as many people as possible and then learn to live with it. We are slowly moving into the endemic phase. A lot will now depend on the further vaccine uptake as this will help us in managing not only the infection rate but also how many people end up in hospital. So, the key is vaccinations.

“Life has to go on. I have seen so much impact on mental health in the lockdowns, it just breaks my heart. Get the jab and let’s get on with life.”

Endemic means the virus will not disappear but enough people will gain immune protection from vaccination and from natural infection for there to be less transmission, hospitalisations and deaths.

Predictions for the endemic stage come from a variety of medical research including a survey carried out by the journal Nature of more than 100 immunologists, infectious disease researchers, and virologists working on SARS-CoV-2.

The current picture in Thanet

Positive case rates for Thanet, as of August 26, stood at 419.2 per 100,000, The England rate is 315.2. Available data does not show how many of those people testing positive have already had vaccinations.

The rate for Thanet was one of the lowest in the country at the start of June with less than 10 positive cases per 100,000 but this has been climbing through July and August, although a slight downturn is evident once again.

Vaccination rates for Thanet stand at 99,630 (83.7%) for first dose and 92,049 (77.3%) for second doses although the number of people being jabbed per day has slowed down.

Covid care Photo EKHUFT

Admissions to East Kent hospitals (Ashford, Margate and Canterbury) have also seen a slight rise with 32 people in hospital for covid as of August 24 and five of those people being on mechanical ventilation. On June 1, there was one patient in East Kent hospitals and for a period mid-month there were no covid in-patients being treated by the hospital trust but this began to rise in July and August.

From April 1 to May 15 the hospital trust for east Kent had no patients in ventilation beds, one person was recorded on May 16 but this then reverts to zero until May 27 with two patients needing ventilation.

Throughout June the number stood at zero but ventilation was required through July and August for a small number of patients.

From mid-May to early July there were no covid-related deaths recorded in Thanet. Since July 9 to August 13 there were three recorded deaths within 28 days of a positive covid test. Again, government data does not show whether those affected were vaccinated or not. The number of people lost to covid or covid-related causes in Thanet is 512.

Government figures show that hospitals are seeing a rise in unvaccinated young adults admitted with COVID-19. A fifth of COVID-19 hospital admissions in England are aged 18 to 34 – 4 times higher than at the peak in the winter of 2020.

Currently the highest covid positive rates in England are being experienced in the South West. Additional support has been deployed to local authorities in Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Plymouth and Torbay.

Measures include:

  • logistical support to maximise vaccine and testing uptake
  • further help for local public health campaigns
  • temporary use of face coverings in communal areas outside classrooms in secondary schools and colleges
  • increased surveillance using multiple methods to monitor the situation

The additional support is in place for 5 weeks as of last week.

Data from Public Health England (PHE) shows COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, the dominant strain in the UK. The analysis shows the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses.

In all age groups the odds of experiencing symptoms for more than 28 days after post-vaccination infection were approximately halved by having two vaccinations.

Currently vaccinations are being offered to all those aged 16 and over and 12 to 15-year-olds with specific underlying health conditions that put them at risk of serious Covid-19 or who are living with people who are immunosuppressed.

Find out how to get your vaccination at https://www.kentandmedwayccg.nhs.uk/your-health/coronavirus/covid19vaccine

34 Comments

  1. Dr Peshen obviously hasn’t got the memo, is parroting off the government line & again as said here as always the figures aren’t showing the age of patients or whether they have been jabbed or not-wonder why? Let’s hear from four experts-

    Prof Andrew Pollard, Oxford vaccine team

    Clear that the delta variant can infect people already vaccinated. Making herd immunity impossible to reach even with high vaccine uptake. Anyone who is still unvaccinated will, at some point, meet the virus. We don’t have anything that will stop transmission,
    so I think we are in a situation where herd immunity is not a possibility, and I suspect the virus will throw up a new variant that is even better at infecting vaccinated individuals.

    Professor Paul Hunter, University of East Anglia

    The concept of herd immunity is unachievable because we know the infection will spread in unvaccinated populations and the latest data is suggesting that two doses is probably only 50 percent protective. Time to change the way the data is collected and recorded as the virus becomes endemic. We need to start moving away from just reporting infections,or just reporting positive cases admitted to hospital, to actually start reporting the number of people who are ill because of Covid. Otherwise we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don’t translate into disease burden.

    Sir Andrew Pollard

    I think as we look at the adult population going forward,
    if we continue to chase community testing and are worried about those results, we’re going to end up in a situation where we’re constantly boosting to try and deal with something which is not manageable. It needs to be moving to clinically driven testing. If someone is unwell they should be tested, but for their contacts, if they’re not unwell then it makes sense for them to be in school and being educated.

    Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College
    Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service. What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn’t been as much with this delta variant. They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem.

    You cannot jab your way out of this.

  2. Precisely and clearly put Steve.
    Dr Ash Peshen needs to be disavowed of the garbled misleading propaganda circulated by the Government and regurgitated by dim and lazy media.

    No, not you Kathy!

  3. I think Dr. Peshen is absolutely right. Vaccinations protect people so that we can gradually resume something close to normality.

    • Except as said by the experts there can be no herd immunity, having the jabs doesn’t stop people catching or spreading it-around 50% chance of protection, there will be new variants emerging that these jabs & boosters have little to no impact upon-such as the emerging Mu variant that is already manifesting here.

      • Not achieving “Herd Immunity” is not an argument against being vaccinated. Quite the opposite. The fact that “Herd Immunity” is probably impossible to achieve is all the more reason for as many of us as possible to get fully vaccinated. That way we at the very least protect ourselves from serious illness and death, and in the majority of cases from any symptomatic reaction at all.
        Vaccines do not prevent the spread of the virus as much as was hoped: but they do prevent some spread. And every time you prevent some spread, you prevent the virus from mutating into an even more contagious version than Delta.

        Get jabbed.
        It makes sense.

  4. For what its worth the FDA have now given Pfizer jab full approval instead of emergency approval which it was before.

    • Many US medical experts and lawyers are awaiting this with interest as big Pharma will then have to disclose the full list of ingredients in the rushed to the market gene-therapy jabs.

  5. There is weird logic here & its from the anti vaxxers. Also Knockout Ned managed 3 words today, keep trying. Andrew said everything i wanted to so it saves me typing. I have seen so many crazy claims by the very same people who think those not like them are simple, lazy & sheep. Jog on.

      • The thing is you’re all getting tied up about it. Just check the age of the people who died from coronavirus. The average is way over 80. Even then they put it as a covid death when they died of something else if it was in their system in the last 28 days. So in reality not many of them are probably dying from it. This is so so wrong what’s going on with the world. 16/17 year olds being vaccined even though not one has died from it. It was actually made the death penalty during the nuremburg trial to force people to have vaccines. What are they doing now. Forcing people to have vaccines they do not need. It pleases some of the old heads on here, because they are miserable. If they were in the soviet Union they would have been part of the peoples police, but not freedom lovers who see this whole saga for what it is. Stopping travel even though someone who has had the vaccine isn’t any less likely to spread it themselves

          • Peter shouting nutter – clearly the jabbed have lost the ability to be articulate. Is that one of the side effects? Alarming to look at the damage from them – analysis here (and figures thought to be 1 to 10 per cent of the true ones): https://yellowcard.ukcolumn.org/yellow-card-reports#%5Bobject%20Object%5D. Unsafe and ineffective, but a big money makers for big Pharma and the injectors earning per jab. Particularly unnecessary for young people, where informed consent appears to be particularly lacking.

          • I agree Andrew, I really can’t understand why all these conspiracy lunatics get such a free reign on here when other sites are cracking down on them. They’re not just nutters… they are dangerous nutters who could cost peoples’ lives.

        • Nobody is forcing anybody to have vaccinations. Stop insulting people. What makes you think that “the old heads” are “miserable”?

          • It really is high time that Kathy Bailes suppressed the fake and false news put about by the ani vaxxers.
            There is a real possibility that such messages have lead to vaccine hesitancy in people, with lethal consequences.

          • I have just looked at “UK Column”- linked to by Democrat- and it seems stuffed full of right-wing conspiracy theories, not an impartial news website at all.

  6. Recent research published in the “Lancet” (a medical journal of international repute) and based on real live data derived from the “Zoe” study, shows that double vaccinated people are far less likely to contract Covid, and of those few who do, less then 50% go on to develop long covid.
    (The Zoe study involves over 4 million people using an app on a daily basis to report their test and vaccination status, and their general health).
    Get vaccinated.

    • Here we go. Asking peoples opinions to be squashed because you have no answers. More are dying from the Vaccine than the virus currently. If that will be the same in the winter I don’t know. ‘Less than 50%’ like thats some amazing figure from a vaccine that was meant to be the answer. We were lied to. Have been all along

      • Anti vaxxers are killing people, fact! There is no excuse to not get vaccinated, fact! I am registered as “Clinically extremely vulnerable” and if get the virus I am dead! One third of people with the virus don’t know they have it, which means they are walking around spreading it! Thanet now has the second highest rate of cases in the South East, after Hastings!

        I would like to see vaccination made mandatory, and those who refuse the inoculation should be recorded, and should they catch the virus they should be refused treatment! I am convinced these anti-vaxxer cranks are in fact doing this deliberately so people die! This is how they get their kicks with their pseudo medical clap trap!

        I grew up in the 40’s and 50’s when Tuberculosis, Dipheria, Poliomyelitis, Measles, Rubella, make your own list, was rife, and knew people at school or work, who had been crippled or died of these diseases! Now they they have been eliminated by medical science, as has Cow Pox, Small Pox, and Tetanus! Wasn’t Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert killed by Typhus, or was it Cholera, both diseases gone now, and Ebola is under control due to medical science! Kathy, stop these anti vaxxers killing people, do not give them the oxygen of publicity to spread their evil views!

        • Just been reading close to a million people are suffering from “Long Covid” which is devastating their lives, probably in some cases for ever! These anti-vaxxers couldn’t care less, and are actively encouraging it. I am more and more convinced they are mentally warped, and should not be given a platform to spread their nonsense, as they get their jollies by killing people without being caught!

  7. I think there’s a Stasi Nazi variant about where some misguided folk call for any opposing views to their own to be censored. Views that have research based on government statistics globally and have the endorsement of top medical and scientific experts in the field. They use the hackneyed and boring framed propaganda terms such as nutter or conspiracy theory, or right wing (what is that nowadays when we follow a marxist playbook?) without realising it reflects on their own inability to do their own research and grasp the big picture. As MIT Boston said, the skeptics turned out to be the more researched and well-informed crowd. And they did not have to resort to muttering tired old insults – which is a very sad way to behave is it not?

    And on the subject of the Lancet, another research paper by the Oxford University Clinical Research Group, published on August 10th there, revealed that vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of Covid-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated. Now this could help explain the dramatic surge of breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated populations around the world. Not safe, and not remotely effective.

    • If you’re so convinced you’re right, why not start a website/blog under your own name? You’re far more likely to be taken seriously if you tell people why you’re so qualified to know more than the vast majority of Doctors and Scientists.

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