Hundreds of 'wonderful' volunteers thanked for helping deliver more than 200,000 vaccines at Portsmouth hub in a year

By Fiona Callingham
Published 2nd Feb 2022, 04:55 BST
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HUNDREDS of ‘wonderful’ volunteers have been thanked for ensuring more than 200,000 Covid vaccines were delivered at the St James’ Hospital hub in Portsmouth over the space of a year.

Since the vaccine centre in Milton opened its doors on February 1, 2021 a total of 216,849 doses – including first, second and booster jabs – have been administered.

Making this possible were around 900 volunteers who gave up their free time to support Solent NHS Trust, which run the hub.

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To mark the anniversary of that first day around 50 of those involved were awarded medals and provided cream teas on site as a thank you for their work – with the others to be sent their medals in the post.

1 year anniversary of vaccines at St James Hospital, Portsmouth on Tuesday 1 February 2022 Pictured: Volunteers Norman Matthew, Ron Hobden, John Hargreaves, Barry Gould, Alexandra Sard, Albie Somerset and Brett Rumfitt at St James Hospital vaccine centre Picture: Habibur Rahman1 year anniversary of vaccines at St James Hospital, Portsmouth on Tuesday 1 February 2022 Pictured: Volunteers Norman Matthew, Ron Hobden, John Hargreaves, Barry Gould, Alexandra Sard, Albie Somerset and Brett Rumfitt at St James Hospital vaccine centre Picture: Habibur Rahman
1 year anniversary of vaccines at St James Hospital, Portsmouth on Tuesday 1 February 2022 Pictured: Volunteers Norman Matthew, Ron Hobden, John Hargreaves, Barry Gould, Alexandra Sard, Albie Somerset and Brett Rumfitt at St James Hospital vaccine centre Picture: Habibur Rahman
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Sarah Williams, volunteer lead for the vaccine programme at St James’, said: ‘A year ago I don’t think we understood the scale of the undertaking and the scale of the site and the amount of volunteers we would need. I was really struck by how quickly people stepped up to help, and especially how quickly the Hive stepped in with around 300 volunteers.

‘And in the early days it was the elderly and most vulnerable people. People were really anxious because for a lot of them it was the first time they were coming out of their homes. Having all our wonderful volunteers here made a huge difference to those people by helping them and just being really friendly.

‘And a huge thank you to St John’s Ambulance and the Royal Voluntary Service for providing a lot of volunteers.’

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