"Covid 19 vaccinations and climate change,"

Covid and Climate Change.

A couple of weeks ago my wife received a letter inviting her to have a Covid 19 booster jab and flu jab on Saturday November 6th in Perth, 23 miles from where we live. Then last week I received a letter inviting me to have my annual flu jab in Perth on Sunday 7th November. I am not due to have my Covid 19 jab for another 10 days so I expect I'll received an invitation for my Covid booster jab in the next week or so. It looks like my wife and I will end up making three 46 mile round trips to get our jabs when we might have been able to get them in one trip thus saving 92 miles of travel and associated pollution. Not only that when I was leaving the vaccination centre in Perth I bumped into my neighbours who had gone there for the same reason and they had seen several people from our village who'd also made the trip that Sunday morning. Needless to say the car park at the vaccination centre was pretty busy.  

I realise that the NHS is under more strain than its ever been but so is our climate and we all need to do as much as we can to limit the further damage to the climate. With that in mind may I make a couple of simple suggestions that might help to reduce the number cars travelling to/from the vaccination centres.

1) Wherever clinically possible group appointments by household (same surname at the same address). People could still receive individual appointment letters, addressed to them, but, where possible, the appointments would be at the same location, same date, same, or similar time. People could then decide for themselves whether they wanted to share appointment details, and potentially rides with other members of their household. Had that been done in our case it would have saved at least one 46 mile journey.

2)  When people are selected for appointments by geographical area e.g. postcode or postcode sector that information could be included on the appointment letter e.g. "We are inviting a number people who live in FK14 7 postcode sector for vacination appointments in Perth between 10 and 11 am on 6/11/2021". If you have friends or neighbours in this area who also have appointments at this time and feel comfortable sharing a car with them you could help reduce pollution and CO2 emissions by sharing a car.

3) Where individuals, or people, in the same household, are due Covid or flu vaccinations within a week or two of each other the NHS could look to group those vaccinations so that people in the household could receive their jabs at the same time. For example had my wifes jabs could have been delayed 11 days and my flu jab also been delayed 10 days we could have offered all our Covid and flu jabs on Novembver 17th.. Alternatively my flu jab could have been brought forward 1 day and my Covid booster jab brought forward 11 days and we could have both received all our jabs on November 7th. 

It seem likely that we're going to be living with both Covid and climate change for the indefinite future. That being the case the challenge of getting the population vaccinated with minimal stress on the NHS and the climate is unlikely to go away any time soon. I hope that the people scheduling the vaccination appointments will consider my suggestions and thus reduce help the impact the vaccination programme has on the climate.