Details of how the UK will vaccinate millions per week

[AsleepInYorkshire]

Covid vaccine: How will the UK jab millions of people?
The UK has launched its biggest mass-vaccination programme, aimed at protecting tens of millions of people from Covid-19 within months.

In a race against a faster-spreading variant of coronavirus, ministers have pinned their hopes of ending a third national lockdown on protecting the most vulnerable groups by spring.

AiY

[zico]

Good news on vaccinations, because every year the NHS, quietly and without fuss, carries out 12 million flu vaccinations in a 5 month period between Sep-Jan. It's not that hard. There will be some additional constraints on the Covid vaccines because they are very valuable, and could easily be sold for £1,000 a pop if the vaccines were somehow diverted to private suppliers.

After the government's dismal record of under-promising and over-delivering, I suspect this may be one area where they're doing the opposite, so it'll look like they are really well organised when they exceed the 2 million per week target. Let's hope so anyway.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... -FINAL.pdf

[bluedonkey]

I wish them - us! - luck but 2m a week is a massive ask. That's equivalent to every single person in the whole of London in one month; it just doesn't seem credible.

[vrdiver]

I wish them - us! - luck but 2m a week is a massive ask.

How many vaccinations could a single person administer in a normal working day? If we assume 2 minutes per patient (allows for cleaning, restocking etc. and assumes the vaccinated patients have somewhere safe to wait 15 minutes after) then a working day of 7 hours (after subtracting lunch and rest breaks) would result in 30x7=210 injections per person. Let's call it 200 to make the maths easy.
Two million jabs per day target, at 200 jabs delivered per day per person then requires 10,000 full time people. Some will come from existing, trained stock (nurses, medical staff, phlebotomists etc.) Others will need to be trained up.

Anybody able to offer a better estimate of throughput rate, or how many existing staff are available and what the shortage might look like?

I'm curious to understand how feasible the rollout targets are and whether this is a big fuss about nothing or an extremely ambitious exercise?

I'm also wondering what the total number of people targeted to be vaccinated is? The priority groups go as low as 50+ age group but don't mention anybody in good health below 50.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I wish them - us! - luck but 2m a week is a massive ask.

How many vaccinations could a single person administer in a normal working day? If we assume 2 minutes per patient (allows for cleaning, restocking etc. and assumes the vaccinated patients have somewhere safe to wait 15 minutes after) then a working day of 7 hours (after subtracting lunch and rest breaks) would result in 30x7=210 injections per person. Let's call it 200 to make the maths easy.
Two million jabs per day target, at 200 jabs delivered per day per person then requires 10,000 full time people. Some will come from existing, trained stock (nurses, medical staff, phlebotomists etc.) Others will need to be trained up.

Anybody able to offer a better estimate of throughput rate, or how many existing staff are available and what the shortage might look like?

I'm curious to understand how feasible the rollout targets are and whether this is a big fuss about nothing or an extremely ambitious exercise?

I'm also wondering what the total number of people targeted to be vaccinated is? The priority groups go as low as 50+ age group but don't mention anybody in good health below 50.

As usual this kind of stuff is way above my pay grade. However, isn't the requirement for 2m per week not per day?

AiY

[Mike4]

How many vaccinations could a single person administer in a normal working day? If we assume 2 minutes per patient (allows for cleaning, restocking etc. and assumes the vaccinated patients have somewhere safe to wait 15 minutes after) then a working day of 7 hours (after subtracting lunch and rest breaks) would result in 30x7=210 injections per person. Let's call it 200 to make the maths easy.
Two million jabs per day target, at 200 jabs delivered per day per person then requires 10,000 full time people. Some will come from existing, trained stock (nurses, medical staff, phlebotomists etc.) Others will need to be trained up.

Anybody able to offer a better estimate of throughput rate

I'd suggest that yes although 2 mins per patient is reasonable for the jabber, the amount of backroom staff work to contact 200 people and make 200 consecutive appointments then receive them, show them where to park, martial them into a 2m spaced queue then shoo them all of site after 15 mins is MASSIVE in comparison. In fact I'd estimate it would take probably about 6 full time admin staff to support one full time vaccine-jabber.

[vrdiver]

As usual this kind of stuff is way above my pay grade. However, isn't the requirement for 2m per week not per day?

AiY

Quite correct. My apologies. Luckily for my initial estimate, Mike4 has suggested that each jabber will need 6 support staff to get the patients organised and marshalled, so my x7 error is balanced out by the +6 per jabber requirement.

It's still a very rough ballpark number though.

In the wiki page on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_programme_in_the_United_Kingdom) there are currently 994 vaccination sites operating, so if we staff each site with an average of 10 people, we get to the required capacity? If we've got there that quickly, then why aren't we aiming much, much higher, or (more probably) my jabbing rate is way off.

VRD

[redsturgeon]

It is a massive undertaking possibly doable with a fair wind in our sails and with not unforeseen setback due to vaccine shortages etc.

It's a big ask though considering how well things have gone so far.

John

[AsleepInYorkshire]

As usual this kind of stuff is way above my pay grade. However, isn't the requirement for 2m per week not per day?

AiY

Quite correct. My apologies. Luckily for my initial estimate, Mike4 has suggested that each jabber will need 6 support staff to get the patients organised and marshalled, so my x7 error is balanced out by the +6 per jabber requirement.

It's still a very rough ballpark number though.

In the wiki page on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_programme_in_the_United_Kingdom) there are currently 994 vaccination sites operating, so if we staff each site with an average of 10 people, we get to the required capacity? If we've got there that quickly, then why aren't we aiming much, much higher, or (more probably) my jabbing rate is way off.

VRD

I'd suggest that the 994 sites may be misleading, albeit I couldn't really put a number on that. But by way of a silly analogy a site in the Orkneys will not inject nearly as many as a site based in a city. And our population is spread out over the country so not all those with a high priority are in one place.

My numbers, which are as vague as anyone's are based on the number of injecting outlets and use a "notional average" per outlet of injections per hour.

2,000,000 injections per week = 285,714/day
285,714 injections per day = 287 injections per outlet per day
287 injections per outlet per day = 29 injections per hr (based on 10hrs)

29 injections per outlet per hour = 1 nurses per outlet for 2 minutes a jab or 2 nurses per outlet for 4 minutes a jab.

Whilst it's feasible the staff still have to carry out other "routine" medical works too.

That aside I was in my medical centre less than a minute for my recent flu jab. It literally was a factory line. And all credit to the medical fraternity for working so hard. They had a guy on the front door who sorted Covid out, then a chaperone to each of the nurses rooms and then out of the back door whilst rolling your sleeve down. AS you marched through you gave your name and you were struck of the computer by someone in the office.

So I'd guess each nurse was jabbing 20-40 people per hour. My guess is that each outlet will be given a sum of money for each injection it carries out from some funding body?

AiY

[Mike4]

That aside I was in my medical centre less than a minute for my recent flu jab. It literally was a factory line. And all credit to the medical fraternity for working so hard. They had a guy on the front door who sorted Covid out, then a chaperone to each of the nurses rooms and then out of the back door whilst rolling your sleeve down. AS you marched through you gave your name and you were struck of the computer by someone in the office.

So I'd guess each nurse was jabbing 20-40 people per hour. My guess is that each outlet will be given a sum of money for each injection it carries out from some funding body?

AiY

I'd still suggest this 20-40 people per hour was only happening on a single day, and this was the culmination of a whole TON of work done in advance on the phones getting hold of 250 people and negotiating convenient appointment times with each of them. In my line of business I spend quit a lot of time on the phone making appointments and making consecutive appointments with two human beans in one area is nigh on impossible. It makes herding cats seem easy.

I'd say the making of the appointments accounts for 90% of the labour involved in conducing a vaccine day. In addition, this problem with the Pfizer vaccine coming in 975-dose slabs that all get thawed in one go means any given vaccine day must be subject to cancellation if the appointment teams fail to make say, 1,100 appointments for that day. Probably one in ten people won't turn up which means a wasted dose if they don't over=appoint.

[XFool]

After the government's dismal record of under-promising and over-delivering

Shurley shome mishtake?

[Bouleversee]

That aside I was in my medical centre less than a minute for my recent flu jab. It literally was a factory line. And all credit to the medical fraternity for working so hard. They had a guy on the front door who sorted Covid out, then a chaperone to each of the nurses rooms and then out of the back door whilst rolling your sleeve down. AS you marched through you gave your name and you were struck of the computer by someone in the office.

So I'd guess each nurse was jabbing 20-40 people per hour. My guess is that each outlet will be given a sum of money for each injection it carries out from some funding body?

AiY

I'd still suggest this 20-40 people per hour was only happening on a single day, and this was the culmination of a whole TON of work done in advance on the phones getting hold of 250 people and negotiating convenient appointment times with each of them. In my line of business I spend quit a lot of time on the phone making appointments and making consecutive appointments with two human beans in one area is nigh on impossible. It makes herding cats seem easy.

I'd say the making of the appointments accounts for 90% of the labour involved in conducing a vaccine day. In addition, this problem with the Pfizer vaccine coming in 975-dose slabs that all get thawed in one go means any given vaccine day must be subject to cancellation if the appointment teams fail to make say, 1,100 appointments for that day. Probably one in ten people won't turn up which means a wasted dose if they don't over=appoint.

You have to sit down for 15 mins in the waiting room after having the Covid jab in case you have an allergic reaction even if you have never had one before. I didn't have to wait at all for the jab, however, whereas a friend who went a few days later to the same hospital had to wait outside in the cold for 10 mins before being admitted.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

That aside I was in my medical centre less than a minute for my recent flu jab. It literally was a factory line. And all credit to the medical fraternity for working so hard. They had a guy on the front door who sorted Covid out, then a chaperone to each of the nurses rooms and then out of the back door whilst rolling your sleeve down. AS you marched through you gave your name and you were struck of the computer by someone in the office.

So I'd guess each nurse was jabbing 20-40 people per hour. My guess is that each outlet will be given a sum of money for each injection it carries out from some funding body?

AiY

I'd still suggest this 20-40 people per hour was only happening on a single day, and this was the culmination of a whole TON of work done in advance on the phones getting hold of 250 people and negotiating convenient appointment times with each of them. In my line of business I spend quit a lot of time on the phone making appointments and making consecutive appointments with two human beans in one area is nigh on impossible. It makes herding cats seem easy.

I'd say the making of the appointments accounts for 90% of the labour involved in conducing a vaccine day. In addition, this problem with the Pfizer vaccine coming in 975-dose slabs that all get thawed in one go means any given vaccine day must be subject to cancellation if the appointment teams fail to make say, 1,100 appointments for that day. Probably one in ten people won't turn up which means a wasted dose if they don't over=appoint.

You have to sit down for 15 mins in the waiting room after having the Covid jab in case you have an allergic reaction even if you have never had one before. I didn't have to wait at all for the jab, however, whereas a friend who went a few days later to the same hospital had to wait outside in the cold for 10 mins before being admitted.

I think we need Gengulphus to run some numbers over this now

I'm guessing the waiting room wait doesn't shift the number tremendously other than a 15 minute stagger at the start of the day/shift. Thanks for the information I'm sure it will keep us mulling for another few hours

Happy New Year

AiY

[zico]

That aside I was in my medical centre less than a minute for my recent flu jab. It literally was a factory line. And all credit to the medical fraternity for working so hard. They had a guy on the front door who sorted Covid out, then a chaperone to each of the nurses rooms and then out of the back door whilst rolling your sleeve down. AS you marched through you gave your name and you were struck of the computer by someone in the office.

So I'd guess each nurse was jabbing 20-40 people per hour. My guess is that each outlet will be given a sum of money for each injection it carries out from some funding body?

AiY

I'd still suggest this 20-40 people per hour was only happening on a single day, and this was the culmination of a whole TON of work done in advance on the phones getting hold of 250 people and negotiating convenient appointment times with each of them. In my line of business I spend quit a lot of time on the phone making appointments and making consecutive appointments with two human beans in one area is nigh on impossible. It makes herding cats seem easy.

I'd say the making of the appointments accounts for 90% of the labour involved in conducing a vaccine day. In addition, this problem with the Pfizer vaccine coming in 975-dose slabs that all get thawed in one go means any given vaccine day must be subject to cancellation if the appointment teams fail to make say, 1,100 appointments for that day. Probably one in ten people won't turn up which means a wasted dose if they don't over=appoint.

From my father's experience, they just ask "do you still want the jab?" and "here's your time, is that OK?". Because getting the jab is such a benefit, I'd assume most people will be more than happy to take the first one they can get. If I was phoning out, and got an awkward person who refused two appointment times, I'd just say "In that case we'll have to ring you back later" and expect them to cave in and agree to the last time you gave them. Probably as well I'm not doing the phoning!

Important to remember all this work can be done in parallel. Doctors' surgeries probably can find suitable patients, and arrange 20-40 appointments per hour.

[Alaric]

I'd assume most people will be more than happy to take the first one they can get. If I was phoning out, and got an awkward person who refused two appointment times, I'd just say "In that case we'll have to ring you back later" and expect them to cave in and agree to the last time you gave them.

For the flu jab this year my local GP practice sent out a text with a link. You were expected to be able to print the link and show up with the printed letter at the appropriate time and place. It was organised as a drive through. No phone calls were needed.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I'd assume most people will be more than happy to take the first one they can get. If I was phoning out, and got an awkward person who refused two appointment times, I'd just say "In that case we'll have to ring you back later" and expect them to cave in and agree to the last time you gave them.

For the flu jab this year my local GP practice sent out a text with a link. You were expected to be able to print the link and show up with the printed letter at the appropriate time and place. It was organised as a drive through. No phone calls were needed.

Heck you're a stickler for detail aren't you? Seriously though yes now you mention it all I got was a text saying turn up at 9am on Saturday for your flu jab. I don't recall a letter.

AiY

[Mike4]

I think we need Gengulphus to run some numbers over this now

I'm guessing the waiting room wait doesn't shift the number tremendously other than a 15 minute stagger at the start of the day/shift. Thanks for the information I'm sure it will keep us mulling for another few hours

Happy New Year

AiY

I don't think we need the brainpower of our Gulphy for a calculation as trivial as this. If they are churning them through one every two minutes, there only needs to be a waiting room big enough for 7.5 people for each to wait for 15 mins. (15/2)

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I think we need Gengulphus to run some numbers over this now

I'm guessing the waiting room wait doesn't shift the number tremendously other than a 15 minute stagger at the start of the day/shift. Thanks for the information I'm sure it will keep us mulling for another few hours

Happy New Year

AiY

I don't think we need the brainpower of our Gulphy for a calculation as trivial as this. If they are churning them through one every two minutes, there only needs to be a waiting room big enough for 7.5 people for each to wait for 15 mins. (15/2)

That's the sort of maths that's way above my Fool grade

AiY

[Mike4]

I think we need Gengulphus to run some numbers over this now

I'm guessing the waiting room wait doesn't shift the number tremendously other than a 15 minute stagger at the start of the day/shift. Thanks for the information I'm sure it will keep us mulling for another few hours

Happy New Year

AiY

I don't think we need the brainpower of our Gulphy for a calculation as trivial as this. If they are churning them through one every two minutes, there only needs to be a waiting room big enough for 7.5 people for each to wait for 15 mins. (15/2)

That's the sort of maths that's way above my Fool grade

AiY

I think it's arithmetic rather than maths.

Just the sort of thing our Gulphy will know!! !

[JohnB]

You are not vaccinating an Army platoon. You are vaccinating people like my Mum, who back problems are much worse in the morning than the afternoon, is rather deaf, can't walk more than 100 yards or stand around for more than 5 minutes, takes time to disrobe, and needs me on arm and a stick on the other. We are hoping that the same local pharmacy that does her flu jab can administer it, as we can park outside and one man can do the jab and paperwork in 10 minutes. Together with the appointment system, I'd estimate 20 minutes of staff time per jab, or 100 per man week, so 2m vaccinations a week needs 20,000 staff.