East Sussex’s first pharmacy-run vaccine centre opens: in pictures

Ticehurst Pharmacy will be managing the vaccine centre from Ticehurst Village Hall, in Lower High Street.

The centre, which opened on Thursday (January 21), will provide a minimum of 1,000 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine per week ‘to those eligible’ in the community.

People have been told not to turn up but that they will receive a letter inviting them to book a vaccine appointment through an online NHS booking service. This is to ensure the centre does not become overrun with people dropping in.

Ticehurst Pharmacy is one of 200 pharmacy-run centres across the UK which started vaccinating people today (Thursday, January 21) after six opened last week.

Hardik Desai, superintendent pharmacist at Ticehurst Pharmacy, said: “I’m delighted to be involved in the exciting and very important role of setting up and managing a vaccination centre. From our base in Ticehurst we can provide a minimum of 1,000 doses of the vaccine per week to those eligible in our community. We will be working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with our team of nurses and Ticehurst Community Friends volunteers. This critical service, along with the annual flu jab, and the many other services we provide, is community pharmacy at its very best – serving the community in which we live and work.”

Ticehurst Pharmacy becomes the first Sussex pharmacy-run site to go live offering vaccines.

Craig McEwan, chairman of East Sussex Local Pharmaceutical Committee: “It’s great to see Sussex’s first pharmacy-led vaccination centre going live. Pharmacists across the county have been ready and willing to participate in the vaccination programme, so to finally see our first centre up and running is a really positive first step. Having a community pharmacy based service in operation, serving its local community, will provide fantastic provision to the local community. We now hope to see more community pharmacies coming online in the coming weeks.”

Last week, the Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPCs) in West Sussex, East Sussex and Surrey said that if pharmacies in all three counties vaccinated 20 people a day for every day they are open in a week then 10,400 would receive their jabs.

In East Sussex (including Brighton and Hove), there are 161 pharmacies meaning 3,220 people could be vaccinated each week.