Off Topic: Help getting to Vaccination centres

Apologies for being off topic but I thought the RISC OS community an excellent sounding board and pool of resources.

Help getting to Vaccination centres. A lot of those people being currently called for vaccination don’t drive. I don’t know if there are many missed
appointments but it is in everyone’s interests to ensure none are missed.
I know that Bus and Taxi drivers are doing a great job taking people to vaccination centres, but to reduce the risk as much as possible of
infection transmission. I think it is best done by a neighbour who transports just one (or two people from the same household).
Also not everyone can afford a Taxi or public transport is not practicable.

I’m proposing local Facebook groups to co-ordinate lifts.
e.g. COVID-VACCINE-UK-BN17, COVID-VACCCINE-UK-SW1 etc.
I realise many people who will need lifts will not be on Facebook but hopefully family, friends, neighbours, and existing groups supporting the vulnerable
such as Volunteer groups, Churches, local councils could liaise via the groups with volunteer drivers.

I’m sure there will already be many groups doing this in some localities, in which case the postcode based Facebook group could just signpost to it.

Does anyone know if the invitation for a Vaccine appointment offers any advice for travelling for those who don’t have their own transport?

There are 124 PostCode Areas e.g. BN and 3,377 districts e.g. BN17

Are any of you willing to help setup (But probably not run) some of the 3,377 Facebook groups
I’d want to try and get a group registered for every UK Postcode district within a couple of days so that they couldn’t be registered by someone for commercial or disinformation purposes.

Initially I’m looking for some help finalising the initial wording on the FB groups page
Then creating the 3,377 FB groups which only takes about a minute or so each, The initial text would be appealing for someone in that area to be willing to take over the admin of the group. Once someone local has been added as an owner/moderator no further input should be necessary by whoever created the group.

The biggest problem is that the groups will not be able to vet properly the volunteer drivers.
NHS volunteer drivers are required to be “Enhanced DBS checked with barred list”
So any user of the service will have to be told of what if any vetting had been done and appropriately warned.

Other notes:
I’ve looked at my County Council (West Sussex) and District Council (Arun) Websites, there is a form for requesting general Covid help (Shopping, Medicine etc.) but nothing about Patient Transport for vaccinations.
I don’t think this volunteer service should be used to go to the mass centres and that only those people with their own transport should use them.
Drivers would be banned from accepting any money (Any suggestion of paying for fuel could easily be abused).
Hopefully enough drivers could be recruited so that they’d only do one patient transport a week to reduce infection transmission.

Recommended driver checks, info required:
Photo ID (i.e. address and photo)
Car make, model, colour and Reg.
Physical description

To co-ordinate things I’ve created (but no content yet):
COVID-VACCINE-HELP
COVID-VACCINE-HELP-UK

I’d be interested in hearing how other countries are tackling this problem.

I’d be interested in hearing how other countries are tackling this problem.

In the case of France, it’s easy. They pretty much aren’t. :-(

So far, 138,351 people have been vaccinated. People in nursing homes, their carers, firemen, medical staff, certain handicapped people, and domestic aides over the age of 50.

As of the 18th of January, the vaccination will enlarge to give it to anybody over the age of 75 that wants it.

You know, we’re going to have another lockdown with such a piss-poor effort as this…

https://www.ouest-france.fr/sante/vaccin/carte-covid-19-138-000-personnes-vaccinees-en-france-d-importantes-differences-entre-les-regions-7114594

Does anyone know if the invitation for a Vaccine appointment offers any advice for travelling for those who don’t have their own transport?

According to this, if one doesn’t have the means to travel, then one waits and gets the jab via one’s local GP which, presumably, one can get to. The bigger centres are to process those who can get there by their own means, so free up the smaller, local sites for those who can’t.

The biggest problem is that the groups will not be able to vet properly the volunteer drivers.

I feel that a key requirement for the volunteer drivers would be a robust C-19 test to ensure that they weren’t about to pass the virus on at the eleventh hour, and that could be tricky to organise without “official” involvement. Anyone, even informally, “organising” lift-sharing of this kind would need to bear this in mind, I suspect.

The question of insurance (of both the car and PLI varieties) springs to mind, too, as soon as things become more formalised than a neighbourly discussion over the garden fence.

According to this, if one doesn’t have the means to travel, then one waits and gets the jab via one’s local GP which, presumably, one can get to.

AIUI most GP practices have grouped together and set up ‘Local hubs’ this is what has happened in our area and it is getting to this ‘Local hub’ I’m thinking of¹. In rural areas just getting to their own GP surgery could be a problem.
Yes a C-19 test is highly desirable. I don’t think professional Taxi Drivers are regularly tested or will be offered vaccinations early. It is reducing the risk to lower than from Taxi drivers that my scheme aims to achieve.
¹ My GP surgery is 1 mile away the hub is over 3 miles away.

So far, 138,351 people have been vaccinated

Rick, official stats for UK

Total doses 2,333,764
First dose only 1,959,151
Second dose 374,613

So, completed vaccination set now done on 2.7 times the number in France.
It may take a few weeks to figure out whether the French or UK effort is better, but the coverage with first jab is just short of 2 million in a touch over 30 days

In Germany, the plan is that mobile vaccination teams visit those that cannot come to the vaccination centres.

Plan has not started to happen yet, however (and there won’t be enough doses of vaccine for a long time to come – if we keep the current speed, we’ll probably achieve herd immunity by vaccination in 2022, so probably herd immunity by illness will come first). Additionally, some counties have announced to pay the taxi fares for the members of the high risk group who cannot afford it. A risky plan if you ask me, because taxi drivers are not automatically immune to the virus – at least AFAIK…

Amusingly, every Bundesland has its own method of how to get its people to a vaccination – some actively notify, some wait that you call a hotline (which mostly consists of hearing the busy tone), some wait for the arrival of a working IT solution (which I’m sure will happen before an adequate school IT infrastructure for the 21st century will arrive).

Everything you need to know about German IT infrastructure is that our mobile internet is on the same level as Albania’s. Germany’s public administration has just spent many millions of Euros to buy extended support for Windows 7.

Well, comparison with mainland Europe seems to show that Britain is doing quite well. I wonder if we would be doing even better if our politicians were even more perfect than they already are…

I am not in any rush.

We have self isolated since Easter, so I am quite happy to let others have the appointments at a mass vacination center. Seems to me that there are too man people there.

We can wait here until our GP surgery can do it.

But back to the original point:

Are any of you willing to help setup (But probably not run) some of the 3,377 Facebook groups?

I have been isolating from Facebook since the dawn of time, so probably not.

I have been isolating from Facebook since the dawn of time

:-)