Covid-19: Vaccination centre near 'hard-hit' Medway

A mass-vaccination centre is to be set up near the Medway towns which have been among areas worst-hit by Covid-19, the Prime Minister has said.

Boris Johnson revealed the plan when challenged at Prime Minister's Questions by MP Rehman Chishti.

The Gillingham and Rainham MP said people in their 80s and 90s had not yet had the vaccine in Medway and Kent, where a Covid-19 variant was found.

Mr Johnson said some 127,000 people had already received doses in the area.

He added: "We've vaccinated more than 80% of those over 80 across the country and are certainly looking at a large-scale vaccination centre near him [Mr Chishti]."

The prime minister did not disclose where the site would be, but Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group's chief nurse, Paula Wilkins, told Kent County Council's health cabinet committee a centre was due to open in Gravesend next week.

She said there were plans for further sites in Thanet and west Kent.

No specific location in Medway was mentioned.

Mr Chishti told the prime minister: "My constituents in Gillingham and Rainham and wider Medway towns would like me to raise their real concerns with regard to the availability of the vaccine in our towns."

He said Medway had been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country.

Mr Johnson said he shared the frustration at the pace of the vaccination rollout, but said it was still the fastest in Europe.

Latest government figures show more than 49,000 people aged 80 or over in Kent and Medway have received their first dose of the vaccine out of nearly 1.7m across England.

Among under-80s, the figure is 57,923.

Meanwhile, Folkestone MP Damian Collins has called for greater sharing of detailed medical records to enable vaccination teams to get to "hard-to-reach" individuals.

The prime minister said this would happen as far as was possible without breaching confidentiality constraints.