Nurses deliver over 2,500 jabs in three days as vaccination program gets fully under way
GHA Nursing Assistants Geraldine Espinosa and Rosanne Bossino were on hand to supervise patients waiting after they had had their vaccines.
Within three days of the first shipment of the Covid-19 vaccine arriving on the Rock, some 2,501 people have been vaccinated against the virus.
They include frontline healthcare personnel and residents of facilities managed by Elderly Residential Services, as well as older members of the community.
On Monday alone, the newly opened vaccination centre at the ICC vaccinated 581 people, all of whom were over the age of 70.
In parallel, the Elderly Residential Services continued their vaccination programme by injecting people from both Calpe and Cochrane wards at St Bernard’s Hospital with the vaccine, as well as eligible residents from Mount Alvernia.
As the Covid-19 vaccine cannot be given to anyone within 28 days of them testing positive for the virus, not all Mount Alvernia residents could receive their vaccine immediately.
Arrangements have been made however to return to vaccinate more residents as soon as possible.
On Monday, 68 ERS residents were vaccinated together with 40 members of ERS care and healthcare staff.
At St Bernard’s Hospital the GHA and Care staff vaccination programme continued with 336 members of staff being vaccinated on Monday.
On Tuesday at 4.30am, staff at the GHA pharmacy department were back in the basement of St Bernard’s Hospital to prepare the vaccines for delivery to the various vaccination sites under Royal Gibraltar Police escort.
On Tuesday, another 1056 vaccinations were administered, including 303 GHA staff members, 28 GHA in-patients, 17 in-patients at Ocean Views, 84 staff at Elderly Residential Services, 36 Elderly Residential Services residents and 588 members of the community aged over 70.
“2501 vaccinations in three days is an amazing accomplishment,” said the Minister for Health and Care, Samantha Sacramento.
“I am extremely proud of our excellent staff at the GHA for their hard work and incredible dedication.”
“We should all be grateful to our frontline working staff who are pulling Gibraltar together when it matters most.”
Earlier this week Ms Sacramento visited the ICC vaccination centre to formally open it and meet the staff and “inspirational” people who had come to be vacinated.
“I would like to thank everyone involved in this amazing endeavour, of whom there were approximately 50 staff and volunteers running this one vaccination centre alone,” she said.
“Every dose of vaccine that goes into someone’s arm is one more person that is now on the way towards immunity from this virus.”
“Lives are being saved by this mass vaccination programme in Gibraltar.”
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