I have often sung the praises of the UK's vaccination programme - the wife and I got both our jabs without a hitch - but now they are winding it all down (instead of doing a final push to the finish line of around 90% double-jabbed, there is a hard core of refuseniks of say 10%) and the NHS don't seem to care any more.
The Lad went along with some mates to get his first jab at one of the drop-in sessions at Arsenal's football ground (or something like that) and dutifully kept the card they gave him with the date and batch number. He got the email (or text message or whatever they send you) with the date and time for his second jab, which should have been the week before last. He turned up on time, rolled up his sleeve and had his card ready for cross-referencing.
"Sorry, sir" said the admin person opposite the nurse, "It appears you haven't had your first jab yet, so we can't give you your second jab. Please ask your GP to update your records so that we can see it on our system. Then book another appointment."
In a sane world, they could have just pretended to give him a first jab (the doses are identical AFAIAA). If in doubt, just jab people! There might be a few nutcases who end up being vaccinated half a dozen times, but so what?. He has just set off for his fourth attempt at persuading the GP surgery to update his records, having been fobbed off with the usual excuses the previous three times.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him, but it wouldn't surprise me if they think up yet another excuse for not doing what they are paid to do. I do wonder why they are happy to waste so much of our time and theirs to get out of doing something that would be quicker than endlessly fobbing us off. Or maybe they'll say they'll do it and then simply not do it. Or maybe they'll do it and it still won't show up on the system.
Ah well.
Update. He just came back. The GP surgery took his card last week so that they could 'update the system' but they admitted they'd lost it ("We got a lot of those cards last week.") and gave him a bit of paper with the same info on it instead.
Debate Magazine
