Yahoo Finance Hundreds of young people queue at Spurs’ stadium for vaccines
Hundreds of young people flocked to a mass vaccination centre at Tottenham Hotspur stadium on Sunday to get their coronavirus vaccine.
The event was open to people aged 18 or older who booked ahead or simply turned up.
Spurs ambassadors Ledley King, Gary Mabbutt and Ossie Ardiles welcomed Londoners at the start of the day.
Spurs said that all people attending would receive a 20 per cent discount code for stadium tours and The Dare Skywalk.
London has experienced lower rates of vaccination than other parts of the country but is entering a “summer sprint”, according to the regional director for London at Public Health England (PHE).
Professor Kevin Fenton said the capital’s vaccination drive had been making “incredible progress” over the past few weeks.
“We’re just about entering into a final summer sprint, where we’re working with local authorities to get the rates up among everybody over age 18, but especially those aged over 40,” he said.
“That’s our number one focus in the city now.”
On Saturday, thousands of young people were jabbed at mass vaccination centres at West Ham, Chelsea and Charlton.
All those over 18 are now eligible for a vaccine and Londoners have been urged to get jabbed as cases of the Delta variant rise.
On Saturday there was surge testing in Clapham, Brixton, West Norwood and Vauxhall after clusters of the variant were detected.
Prof Fenton said health officials always knew getting vaccines into the arms of all Londoners would be harder than in other parts of the country.
He told LBC: “London is a large metropolitan area population of nine million.
“It’s very diverse – we have pockets of poverty, deprivation, we have people who travel and move across the city.
“If you look at other vaccination programmes, London generally had lower rates of vaccine uptake than other regions because of many of the issues that I’ve mentioned.”
As well as extra staff and mass vaccination sites, Prof Fenton said the effort needs “working in communities and knocking on doors, making sure we have those outreach persons giving vaccines”.
He said the PHE staff in London were “really dealing with hesitancy that people may have about getting vaccinated, it’s safety, or where to get it done”.
Meanhwhile NHS England data shows a total of 8,206,429 jabs were given to people in London between December 8 and June 19, including 4,968,972 first doses and 3,237,457 second doses.
This compares with 6,697,597 first doses and 5,124,624 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 11,822,221.
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