The GP covid vaccination hub at the Saga site in Ramsgate will move to a former shop unit at Westwood next month.
The hub has been operating from Saga since March after it moved from St Peter’s Church Hall.
The last session runs at Saga on January 13 and then reopens at the Westwood unit between Currys/PC World and Wickes on January 15.
The site was visited this month by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as part of the drive to get people to have their booster jabs. He described it as one of the best centres he had seen.
An NHS Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group spokesperson said: “Thanet vaccination centre has been enormously successful with more than 200,000 vaccinations given in 12 months, it was also recently visited by the Prime Minister who commented on its outstanding success helping to protect people in the local area.
“The team is moving a short distance to the former (PC World) store in Westwood (used prior to the Currys/PC World shared unit which is still open and trading) , where it will continue to offer vaccines to the people of Thanet and east Kent.
“The move takes place on Saturday, 15 January. The last day in the Saga building will be 13 January. There isn’t any planned downtime. The new site will still be known as Thanet vaccination centre.
“In the meantime, there are plenty of places in Kent and Medway to be vaccinated – you can find a full list here: https://www.kentandmedwayccg.nhs.uk/your-health/coronavirus/covid19vaccine.’’
‘Doc’ Atherton, who is part of the team working at Saga, said: “We’re really excited for the forthcoming move to the Westwood site. It’ll sound strange going forward calling us the Thanet Vaccination Centre as opposed to Saga but obviously, we don’t want to be confusing patients.
“We would like to thank Saga for the use of their site in making a huge difference here in Thanet. We will keep patients fully up to date too via The Isle of Thanet News and, of course, Academy FM will also continue to keep everyone updated with what goes on.
“We’ve a big task ahead but we would like to thank everyone for their continued support in what we do. From January next week we will be reverting to our usual opening times of Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 8am to 5:30pm and I am also pleased to say that we will not have any downtime either as our last day at Saga is Thursday 13th January and our first day at the new site will be Saturday 15th January.”
Internal works to convert the unit interior are currently underway.
The Saga site at Ramsgate is open today for walk-ins until 8pm and tomorrow (New Year’s Eve) open from 8am until 2pm.
