Letter: We Need to Invoke the Dunkirk Spirit to Organise the Vaccination Programme

Published on: 12 Jan, 2021
Updated on: 12 Jan, 2021

From: J A Cranwell

In response to: Worried About Your Vaccination? Read the help From the NHS’s CCG

Since the start of the vaccination campaign, the logistics problem of getting the elderly to the vaccination centres has become increasingly clear.

The solution that suggests itself is to invoke the Dunkirk spirit, and the call for “small ships”.

We have a fleet of mini-buses, sitting unused around the county. These belong to schools, councils, clubs, and local charities. With sufficient volunteer drivers, they could be deployed to ferry the local elderly to the centres, as they are called up.

I know this can be done, because we have such a bus in the Horsleys, and we have commenced vaccination runs for our elderly residents. We have made the bus as Covid-safe as possible, with an airtight plexiglass partition between the driver and passenger compartments, and touchless sanitiser dispensers at both entrances.

Passengers are required to wear a facemask throughout the journey. I would be happy to equip any other buses similarly and/or to explain what is required. Personal cars are not best suited to this, with driver and passengers in such close proximity.

I know there are many other suitable vehicles around the borough and county. Let’s deploy them.

Details of the Horsleys bus at https://www.easthorsley.info/news/the-horsley-community-bus