Prime minister Boris Johnson last night urged people to get vaccinated in readiness for a “tidal wave” of covid variant Omicron, which is far more infectious than previous variants.
Former city council leader Warren Morgan was one of those queueing for at Pfizer jab at Whitehawk Inn in Whitehawk Road this morning.
He began queuing ten minutes after it opened at 10.30am – but about 40 minutes later, he was told there were only 150 doses available, and he was too far back in the queue to get one.
@wesstreeting this is the queue I joined at my local walk-in ten minutes after it opened today, only to be turned away as they only had 150 doses. It is 1 of only 2 four hour sessions in Brighton and Hove (270k people) this week. No appts till mid/late Jan now even for over-50s. pic.twitter.com/bj382r0KoL
— Warren Morgan 🇪🇺 (@warrenmorgan) December 13, 2021
The only other walk-in sessions this week are at St Peter’s Church in York Place, Brighton, from 10.30am to 2.30pm on Friday at at The Bevy in Hillside, Bevendean, from 10.30am to 1.30pm on Saturday.
The Churchill Square centre suspended walk-ins last week in order to free up capacity for 140,000 extra appointments a week.
However, there are now no appointments available until next year – and the booking portal has been crashing because of large numbers wanting to book one.
This morning, the health service was making sure there was “further capacity” on the NHS website to book booster jabs.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said 110,000 people booked a booster before 9am on Monday.
But asked how the website would therefore cope with the much higher number of bookings needed, he said: “Across the programme we are increasing our capacity, be it making sure there is further capacity on the site to adapt to the increased demand, or indeed capacity on the ground.”
