A specially adapted bus is rolling out the covid vaccine to hundreds of housebound patients in remote parts of rural Perthshire.
The modified holiday coach is operated by the Scottish Ambulance Service and is delivering jabs to elderly people in the 70 to 79 age bracket, as well as to clinically vulnerably patients.
The vehicle has been offered free of charge by Lochs and Glens Holidays of Gartocharn, West Dumbartonshire. Working out of Stanley, it has spent the last three days touring the region with five ambulance crew members on board, administering shots of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine to about 400 people.
Ambulance crews are also using a car to reach remote residents.
Scottish Ambulance Service Medical Director Jim Ward said: “This is a great initiative in the fight against Covid-19.
“We have already vaccinated more than 5,000 of our own staff, Community First Responders and students, which has been a fantastic effort by everyone involved.”
He said: “The bus is essentially a mobile vaccination clinic that can access remote and rural Scotland, providing a sheltered place where people can come and get vaccinated in a safe environment by trained healthcare professionals.
“The car will allow people who cannot leave their homes to be vaccinated.”
Mr Ward said: “We have received great feedback from the people who have been vaccinated on the bus and also by those who have been visited at their homes.
“We are very grateful to Lochs and Glens Holidays for providing the bus and look forward to working alongside other health boards and Scottish Government colleagues in developing the initiative and rolling it out to other areas of Scotland.”
The vaccination bus and car pilot aims to support health boards in their vaccination efforts and appointments are made via GP practices.
Dr Daniel Chandler, Associate Director of Public Health at NHS Tayside, added: “The vaccination programme is progressing well in Tayside with over 60,000 people already vaccinated across Dundee, Angus and Perth & Kinross.
“This mobile service provided by the Scottish Ambulance Service will help provide extra capacity to support our GPs and community vaccination teams as we move into the next phase of the programme.”
Neil Wells, Managing Director from Lochs and Glens Holidays, said: “It’s great to be able to help the Scottish Ambulance Service with their work to vaccinate our rural communities.”
On Friday, vaccination centres opened at the Dewars Centre and Blairgowrie Town Hall. A third Perthshire site at the Atholl Centre in Pitlochry is due to open next week.
Once the three centres – along with five others across Tayside – are up and running, 30,000 jabs will be administered every week.
