Care home residents targeted by Sheffield NHS trust for booster jabs

Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust (SHSC) has this week begun giving the jabs to all of its staff in a full scale roll out.

The trust’s three care homes have also been prioritised for onsite vaccinations due to the residents being among the most at risk from the illness.

Birch Avenue at Burncross welcomed GPs from Mill Road Surgery to vaccinate both residents and staff.

Residents at Birch Avenue have dementi or complex needs so they receive specialist support from staff at the home.

The nursing home is run by Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Emily Blakeman, clinical manager at Birch Avenue, said: “Vaccinations are so important for us to protect each other and our service users. At Birch Avenue our service users are really vulnerable so I want my teams to do everything they can to stop the spread of Covid-19 in our tight community.

“I also want to protect my family, I’ve got a little girl and rely on family to help me with childcare so I really don’t want to take COVID-19 home and infect them too

“Getting the boosters has been just another step on our journey of living with Covid-19 and I am so proud of us all for doing everything we can to help tackle this devasting virus.”

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Amy Whitely, a clinical nurse specialist, giving the vaccinations in the trust’s staff vaccination hub said getting the Covid and Flu vaccinations was important to help reduce the spread of the viruses, to help protect vulnerable patients and to protect staff and their loved ones.

She said: “Committing to 15 minutes out of your day to come and get the booster could make all the difference.”

All staff at SHSC are being offered vaccinations over the next month.

SHSC provides inpatient and community services work around mental health, learning disabilities, drug and alcohol problems, dementia and long-term neurological conditions.

Sheffield’s director of public health Greg Fell has said the Covid infection rate is flat but high, around 315 per 100,000, around 10 times higher than this time last year.

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