Covid Vaccination Centre: through the eyes of a Rotary Volunteer

We arrive just before 8.am for the morning shift, where we’re all given our PPE and taken on a tour of the temporary clinic to understand the lay the land before being briefed on the various duties we will be covering. The first appointments are at 8.30am, but as you can imagine some people (especially the elderly) turn up very early. The patients come from most of the Medical Practices in Maidenhead and Cookham as they have joined forces to implement the biggest vaccination programme in UK history.

One of us is standing just outside the entrance to ask people if they have an appointment, and the time, they are also asked if they have any symptoms of Covid19. On entering the town hall the patients are asked to sanitise their hands and they check in with the next volunteer. The patient is handed information on the vaccine, and then joins the queue. Here more volunteers are marshalling the queue, generally to chat to the patients to make them feel at ease and to help those with mobility problems.

One of our key duties is to sanitise seats used in the waiting area as soon as they are vacated. The length of the queue varies, because of arrivals and also how smoothly the inoculations go, but you only hear very few complaints about the wait. If you have two or three men behind each other, all being of an age to have done national service, you get humorous remarks about their time in the army and how inoculations took place 60 years ago!

There are 7 inoculation stations in the main theatre area, and here our next volunteer directs the patients at the front of the queue when one of the stations is available. If there is a husband and wife they will be inoculated together. After patients have been inoculated they are required to sit in spaced out seats for 15 minutes. They are handed a piece of paper with time they allowed to leave, and there is a digital clock on the stage for them all to see. As you can imagine this means more chairs that have to be sanitised between patients!

Rotarian Andrew Chitty commented “I enjoyed helping out with the clinic before Christmas and I also helped on Thursday last week and will be there Thursday this week. From next week my wife, Jean, and I have committed to being a volunteer every Wednesday morning for the following 12 weeks.” 

The Rotary Repsonse to this scheme is being co-ordinated by Rotarian Lisa Hunter, from Maidenhead Bridge Rotary.  She is working closely with the NHS team to fill all 60 volutneer slots, along with other local organisations, on a weekly basis.  Lisa commented "I'm so proud that Rotary is yet again at the forefront of this pandemic, providing more volunteers to ensure the vaccination process runs smoothly.  Rotary will always be leaders in helping others, its just what we do."