THURROCK Council has continued to promote measures to protect borough residents from Covid-19 and has been working with the UK Health Security Agency's Surge Rapid Response Team (SRRT) to deliver messages encouraging local people to get vaccinated.

The council reports that the response team delivered nearly 16,000 leaflets to households in West Thurrock, South Stifford, South Chafford and Grays Riverside from Friday, 18 to Sunday, 27 February. Team members also knocked on more than 7,000 doors and had nearly 2,000 conversations, answering questions and responding to residents' concerns about the vaccine in lower-uptake communities.

Feedback direct from residents' doorsteps will be given to the council's recently appointed 'Community Vaccine Champions' so they can understand first-hand residents' worries and help to encourage communities to get vaccinated.

Porfolio holder for health Cllr Allen Mayes says: "We want to help protect our residents by making sure everyone has access to the facts about the covid-19 vaccines.

"The Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) vaccination bus was parked up at IKEA, Lakeside, from Monday, 21 to Friday, 25 February. Thanks to the hard work of the SRRT team, 88 per cent of the 103 people who received a covid-19 vaccine at this pop-up clinic did so because they'd received a leaflet or had a conversation with the team on their doorstep or in the car park.

"Last week (Monday, 28 February to Saturday, 5 March), 149 people received a covid-19 vaccine when the vaccination bus was at South Essex College in Grays."

Twenty-year-old Megan-Louise Hanmore from Grays had her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine when the vaccination bus was outside South Essex College. She said: "I want to keep my family and friends safe as I see them all the time, and other people too as I work in retail. Having the vaccine is helping me protect them."

Residents can visit EPUT's vaccination bus when it pops up in the borough during a new eight-week programme of activity. During Week One it will be at South Essex College, Grays, on Thursday, 10 and Saturday, 12 March, and IKEA, Lakeside, on Friday, 11 March from 10am to 3pm.

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More information about the pop-up clinics, and three fixed vaccination centres in Thurrock which have weekend and evening opening hours, is available via this link.

Four videos talking about the safety of the covid-19 vaccines are available to watch and share on the council's YouTube channel.