Sheffield MP urges Government to ensure over half of Sheffield 'vaccinated before Easter'

Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, told the House that in Sheffield alone the local Clinical Commissioning Group could effectively vaccinate over half of Sheffield by Easter if they are ‘not held back by bureaucracy and red tape’.

The MP claims this bureaucracy includes experienced GPs being required to take four hours training in order to administer the vaccine, providing advice in how to remove waste packaging from the vaccine, and CCGs unable to tell local MPs which GPs will be rolling out the vaccine.

He said these measures will cause delays to the vaccine rollout unless the Government make urgent changes.

Mr Betts said: “We have a real opportunity now to save lives and prevent financial hardship, both from this awful virus, and the consequences of lockdowns put in place to protect the NHS. We will soon have the supply to vaccinate at a huge rate, and we must make sure this happens without delay.”

Mr Betts has called on the Government to assure that CCGs are allowed to act as quickly as possible to get the vaccine out to the priority groups which will ‘save countless lives’ and not to allow the process to be ‘bogged down in red tape and internal bureaucracy’.

This is when lockdown measures are likely to lift across the four UK nations

While in the Commons he also pressed the Government to provide more funding for local track and trace which he said was having a significantly higher contact rate than the national track and trace service.

He said that the national system has only managed to contact 59 per cent of cases while the local system has succeeded in reaching 75 per cent of cases that the national track and trace was unable to reach.

Mr Betts went on to urge the Government to put in clearer enforcement around the wearing of face masks.

“Many constituents have been reporting blatant instances of people not wearing masks where they should be, yet the Government has failed to provide the necessary enforcement so the police and other relevant authorities are not in a position to do anything about these breaches of guidelines,” he said.

In these confusing and worrying times, local journalism is more vital than ever. Thanks to everyone who helps us ask the questions that matter by taking out a digital subscription or buying a paper. We stand together. Nancy Fielder, editor.