OKEHAMPTON Medical Centre is to offer more vaccination slots over the next few weeks via the NHS’s National Booking System in a bid to meet Government demands to get all eligible adults delivered with a booster by the end of the year.

Those who have not yet had first and second jabs are also being strongly encouraged to take up the offer of vaccination. in the fight against the latest covid variant Omicron. This follows Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on Sunday that all adults would have the chance to get a booster by New Year’s Day.

All slots now have to be booked via the NHS National Booking System at https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination. As the Times went to press, Okehampton Medical Centre practice manager Kiran Bakhshi was obtaining advice from the Devon NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, which manages the NHS in Devon, on how to proceed. In common with other practices there is a feeling among staff that they are already doing everything they can.

Ms Bakhshi said: ’I’m not sure if we can do much more capacity wise than we already are doing so will be interesting to hear what is expected of us and what support will be given. Things change so quickly it’s a challenge to keep up!’

She said that the practice had been working on a schedule of getting everyone offered a booster by the end of January.

’We had just put on clinics up to end of January on NBS including weekends so will see if we can physically do any more before then without breaking!’

She also flagged up a ’little glitch’ which had had led to some appointments on January 4 and 5 at the surgery being double booked.

These appointments had to be cancelled and those affected are asked to rebook.