Concerns 103-year-old and unpaid carers are missing out on Covid-19 vaccine

County and borough councillor Ann Edgeller highlighted the elderly woman’s situation to health bosses on Monday, as it was revealed that 100 per cent of eligible care homes in Staffordshire had been offered the Covid-19 vaccine.

More than 90 per cent of care home residents in the county have now had their first dose, Staffordshire County Council has revealed. The remaining residents, who are currently recovering from Covid-19, need to wait 28 days before they can be vaccinated.

The county council’s Healthy Staffordshire Select Committee was told at its meeting on Monday that as of Thursday 86 per cent of the area’s over 80s had received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. More than 177,000 doses have been given so far – and a further 56,000 are scheduled for this week.

But some of the county’s oldest residents are still waiting, including the 103-year-old woman being assisted by Councillor Edgeller.

She said: “She’s housebound, she’s got carers going in at home. I rang the doctors’ surgery because I was concerned.

“This lady is missing out on her vaccination.”

Neil Carr, senior responsible officer for the Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent vaccination programme, responded: “If we have people over the age of 80 who have not been vaccinated one of the things we should be doing is flagging that.

“I don’t want floodgates to open to GPs’ surgeries, but if we have someone who would be in that absolute priority who still hasn’t received it then I think it’s right and proper that we do contact the surgery.

“We’ve agreed, when GPs need assistance or support with the housebound, that district nurses will. If you let me have the details I will follow it up. That lady deserves her vaccine.”

Councillor Edgeller also asked about vaccinations for unpaid carers.

People working in care homes are in the first priority group for the vaccine. Frontline health and social care workers are also among the groups currently being vaccinated as part of the early stages of the programme.

But Councillor Edgeller said: “What about the unpaid carers, the people looking after people at home because they’re housebound? They’re caring for that person but they’re missing out on being vaccinated.

“I’m really concerned about these unpaid carers. They’re looking after vulnerable people.”

She added that people had praised the vaccination programme however.

“I want to say what a fantastic job you are doing – that’s not just my words, that’s the general public”, she said. “Everybody is praising the way it has been put together.”

Mr Carr responded: “We are having a lot of correspondence from individuals who are unpaid carers. If they don’t fall into one of those four categories at the moment then I’m afraid to say we’re having to be very blunt and they’re not eligible.

“That’s difficult, but we are having to distinguish between paid and unpaid in terms of the four categories.

Clinical director Dr Paddy Hannigan said: “We’re going at the moment on the highest levels of individual risk and we’ve got to be quite careful, given the capacity and vaccine supply, that we use our vaccine to its greatest effect.

“I think if we have a very broad interpretation of carer that will eat into our capacity to do people who are individually at much higher risk – particularly anybody who is travelling across multiple different citizens providing care. We would absolutely do that because of multiplying risk, but with some of these one to one caring roles the carer is often at quite low risk compared to the first four categories.

“We need to be careful as to how we deploy the first phase.”

But programme director Lynn Millar added: “In terms of unpaid carers we are going through a process with local authorities, identifying everybody who is eligible. If they’re working with a personal health budget as a carer or they’re part of any voluntary organisation we’re working very closely with them to identify eligibility.

“If there are individuals or organisations councillors think are eligible then we need to know and we can make that assessment.”