BY VICTOR SPINK
My local health centre telephoned me a week previously to say that I would be given my first jab of the Covid 19 injection at Chertsey Hall Heriot Road on 11.51am the 16th of December, 2020. I arrived at 11.52am and found that the other patients and I were dealt with commendable military precision in the foyer space staffed by mainly ladies in high viz jackets, one of whom advanced and took our temperatures with a forehead thermometer ‘as seen on TV’ type. We were directed pronto into Committee Room ‘A’ where a party of six receptionists was waiting for us behind a line of tables placed in front of a beautiful large flower painting. Here we sat individually at each table and were asked questions. The forms were filled in by kindly receptionists employed to take our details.
It was all done in an unhurried and relaxed manner. Some of us patients were old enough as children to have been evacuated in WW2 so we remembered ‘the drill’.
All we needed was a gas mask, a luggage label tied to our lapels with our name on, a packet of fish paste sandwiches and a sixpenny postal order in our pocket to complete our trip down ‘memory lane’.
I sat down at a table with a young man who gave me information that this was the first day this event was taking place anywhere locally, and that he was a student employed for the period to fill out our details. He said that other centres would be visited by this injection group locally in rotation. A doctor came and asked me questions about my general health, etc. I was given a handful of informative documents to peruse at home, then it was off into the main hall for the injection itself.
In front of the main hall stage were tables with screens in front of them to afford some privacy while the seated patient was asked more questions by the nurse and overseen by a supervisor. The jab itself is given by the skilled nurse and when it is over the nurse places a sticky label on your lapel with the time marked on it. You then have to sit down for 15 minutes. The 15 minutes sit down wait time, controlled by a hall supervisor, is in case anyone has a reaction to the injection and there is the doctor on call to treat any patient in the very rare case that someone might have just such a reaction. There is also a person detailed to disinfect spray and wipe down the 2 metre separated seats and those parts of the hall which people come into contact with. The whole 25-minute experience was a model of efficiency and good humour as one would expect at Chertsey.
(The second visit was very much like the first and one has to salute the efficiency and dedication of all the NHS staff and other personnel concerned in this massive life saving operation. The medic who administered the jab said that everything was going well.)
The patients who had come for their prescribed second jab appeared to be in the older span of life, some having to be helped by their younger loved ones. The whole system in The Chertsey Hall runs “like a well oiled machine” to quote Captain Mainwaring of TVs Dad’s Army fame. Of the virus itself Sgt Arthur Wilson might say “Do you mind awfully clearing off!”.