Burger van and vaccination buses to visit Norfolk's 'hard to reach'

Melanie Craig, chief officer for Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commission Group, said two buses had been offered by Norfolk County Council as part of the next phase of its vaccination programme.

Speaking at Norfolk County Council's Health and Wellbeing Board on Wednesday, Mrs Craig said further community pharmacy sites were due to begin vaccinating in the coming weeks.

She told the meeting: "We are now looking at more specific individual needs of the population. We are looking at how we can take the vaccine to particular community groups.

"In a couple of weeks, two of our vaccination buses will hit the roads and we will be able to use those again to go to areas where people may be less willing to come forward for their vaccine or even to employment sites where we know there are vulnerable groups and use the buses and other models for that."

She said drive-throughs were also being considered among ways to offer vaccinations as it may suit younger groups.

Mrs Craig said: "At the start of the programme you will understand we did not know anything about how the vaccine would perform. There was nervousness around that and it was very tightly controlled on how we could deliver the vaccine.

"There is much more flexibility of how we can deliver the vaccine. We are now starting to see there are more community pharmacies coming on to deliver the vaccination programme to support all of the existing sites."

The county has seen nearly half of adults in Norfolk and Waveney aged over 60 receive the vaccine, with new figures to be released on Thursday.

Tracy Williams, from the CCG, said the models would be used to reach groups who were harder to reach to access the vaccine.

Mrs Williams said: We're looking at delivering models, using the buses, we also have a burger van that we hope to convert to use for some smaller settings and rolling out to some of our hospitals and areas across the county.

""We don't want to leave anybody behind."