Hard-working Ottery St Mary medics have hit the road to deliver vital coronavirus vaccines to local housebound people.

Last weekend, three cars headed out from the town’s medical centre carrying vaccination teams to bring the life-saving jabs to those who could not get in to the practice.

The mobile medics were Dr Simon Kerr and his wife Debbie, senior occupational therapist and care co-ordinator for Devon County Council Social Services, Dr Louise Knight and her husband Dr Lewis Jones, emergency department doctor at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital, and Dr Kate Gurney and her daughter Molly.

Sidmouth Herald: Ottery’s mobile vaccination team, from the left: Debbie Kerr with Dr Simon Kerr and Dr Louise Knight and Dr Lewis JonesOttery’s mobile vaccination team, from the left: Debbie Kerr with Dr Simon Kerr and Dr Louise Knight and Dr Lewis Jones (Image: Coleridge Medical Centre)
Dr Kerr said: “We continue to play a large part in the vaccination programme being co-ordinated through the joint working of the Ottery, Sidmouth, and Honiton practices’ primary care network, working alongside colleagues in Exmouth.”

He said they were “pleased to be among some of the leading practices in Devon in the vaccination programme” and aimed to complete the vaccination of the four most vulnerable cohorts by February 14.

Last Sunday, Ottery’s practice teams vaccinated another 720 or so registered patients within the medical centre, including some 75 who needed to be visited by the three family teams within their own homes.

Dr Kerr explained: “Opportunities were taken both to check up on the general welfare of some of our most frail patients and to provide information about how to access further support through the Ottery Help Scheme and about the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine, with which we were vaccinating.”

They were planning this week to get to around another 75 people who were unable to attend the surgery.

Dr Kerr said: “We are grateful for increasing support from local volunteers.
“We continue to seek further opportunities to vaccinate large numbers of patients in Ottery – trying to provide as local as possible a place of vaccination. We are aware of the guidance asking those over 70 who have not yet been contacted to contact the NHS by dialling 119, and we shall try to work with the other options available to vaccinate as many of our registered patients within the NHS guidance as fast as we are able to.”