Covid: Face-to-face appointments with GPs postponed until 2022 so booster jabs can be prioritised

Covid: Face-to-face appointments with GPs postponed until 2022 so booster jabs can be prioritised
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George McMillan

By George McMillan


Published: 14/12/2021

- 10:27

It comes as the NHS has been told it will need to exceed 840,000 booster jabs per day in a bid to fight Omicron.

Those wanting to see GPs for routine appointments will have to wait until 2022 as the NHS turns it focus to distributing vaccines into the arms of the UK.

Other minor procedures have also been delayed.


NHS England chiefs told staff that patients who could be discharged should be sent home before Christmas.

Sajid Javid said: "We are redeploying NHS staff away from non-urgent services.

"This means that, for the next two weeks, all primary care services will focus on urgent clinical need and vaccines, and some non-urgent appointments and elective surgeries may be postponed until the New Year while we prioritise getting people the booster.

"These are steps that no Health Secretary would wish to take unless absolutely necessary. But I’m convinced that if we don’t prioritise the booster now, the health consequences will be far more grave in the months that lie ahead."

It comes as the NHS has been told it will need to exceed 840,000 booster jabs per day in a bid to fight Omicron, which is causing around 200,000 new infections per day, the Health Secretary has said.

Sajid Javid told MPs that every adult across England could expect to be offered a “chance to get boosted by the end of this month” though he suggested not everyone would get a dose in December.

He said: “It is asking a huge amount of our colleagues in the NHS.

“And it’s our joint view that we can try to offer adults a chance to get boosted by the end of this month.

“And that does not mean every single person necessarily can get that booster, it requires them to come forward and to take up this offer as well, as well as everything going right in this huge expansion plan.”

It follows confusion over whether the Government has promised that people can all have a jab in their arm by the December 31 deadline, or whether they will just have an offer of a future vaccine.

It comes as the UK recorded its first death involving Omicron, and 10 people are in hospital with the variant.

Most of these 10 have received two vaccines and range in age from 18 to 85, though there are no details on whether they have underlying conditions.

Mr Javid told the Commons: “Until now the highest number of jabs that we’ve delivered in a single day in the UK was over 840,000.

“We’ll not only need to match that but we will need to beat that every day. But we can and we’ve got a plan to try and do it.

“We’re opening more vaccination sites including pop-up and mobile sites that’ll be working seven days a week.

“We are training thousands more volunteer vaccinators, we’re asking GPs and pharmacies to do more and we’re drafting in 42 military planning teams across every region of our country.”

Mr Javid said he acknowledge that “our national mission comes with some difficult trade-offs”, meaning some non-urgent appointments and surgery in the NHS may be cancelled.

He added: “These are steps that no Health Secretary would wish to take unless they were absolutely necessary, but I am convinced that if we don’t prioritise the booster now the health consequences will be far more grave in the months that lie ahead.”

Mr Javid told MPs there are now 4,713 confirmed cases of Omicron in the UK, adding that the UK Health Security Agency estimates that the current number of “daily infections are around 200,000”.

He added: “While Omicron represents over 20% of cases in England, we’ve already seen it rise to over 44% in London and we expect it to become the dominant Covid 19 variant in the capital in the next 48 hours.”

Overall, there were a further 54,661 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK as of Monday morning, the Government said.

Earlier this week, Boris Johnson announced the first UK death with Omicron during a visit to a vaccination clinic near Paddington in west London.

The Prime Minister said: “Sadly, yes, Omicron is producing hospitalisations and sadly at least one patient has been confirmed to have died with Omicron.

“So I think the idea that this is somehow a milder version of the virus, I think that’s something we need to set on one side and just recognise the sheer pace at which it accelerates through the population. So the best thing we can do is all get our boosters.”

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