New Darlington vaccination centre is now live

Cockerton Pharmacy has started vaccinating residents against COVID-19

In a new initiative in Darlington, a local pharmacy was chosen to provide a Covid vaccination centre to speed up the rollout programme.

Cockerton Pharmacy, which delivered its first vaccine last week, has revamped part of its offices to provide a suitable vaccination site. In addition to the NHS team, volunteers from Darlington Support are helping as marshals and to sign in residents for their appointments.

Darlington Community Pharmacy Primary Care Network (PCN) Lead Sunil Kumar said: “We are absolutely delighted to see the fast pace of the vaccine programme rollout at our pharmacy. We were able to transform our premises very quickly and efficiently to provide a safe location to vaccinate a significant number of local residents. We would like to take this opportunity to send our enormous thanks to Darlington PCN Director Dr Amanda Riley for her support and to Darlington Support for providing so many amazing and hard-working volunteers on such a short notice. We couldn’t have done it without them.”

Darlington Support founders, Kimberley Scott and George Jabbour, added: “The speed at which everyone has come together to make this happen is phenomenal. We are incredibly grateful to all of Darlington Support volunteers who have been doing everything they can to support the national vaccine programme. Not only have they been volunteering at all the vaccination sites across Darlington, but also they have been transporting residents to their appointments and have even enrolled as volunteer vaccinators with the NHS”.

Picture caption: Darlington Support volunteers helping at Cockerton Pharmacy Covid vaccination centre