Thread by @rowlsmanthorpe

What's happening with the data about the vaccine? Well, let's put it this way: there's a lot to sort out

A THREAD on my reporting today

This is Dr Elliot Singer, a GP in Waltham Forest. If anyone can be called a community doctor, it’s him. He wasn’t just born locally, he was delivered by the GP who used to have his practice

He’s delighted to be delivering the vaccine, but the tech is causing “huge frustration“

There are numerous software systems involved with vaccination, but two are central. 1. Recording who's had the vaccine (and which vaccine, what batch etc). 2. Inviting and booking patients for appointments - what's known as "call and recall"

There are problems with both

The data recording is done by a system called Pinnacle. It arrived last week and there've been problems ever since. There are issues with access. It also keeps crashing

One senior health official told me the IT was “failing constantly”

As a result, a lot of the data capture is being done by hand, before being entered into the system. Yes, that’s right, in 2020, vaccine data is being coached with pen and paper

From a data point of view, this is barbaric. But to Dr Singer, the real cost is the wasted time

"We’re all getting really frustrated. It’s just not helping to deliver the programme,” he said

The practice keeps people outside as much as possible👇

“It's not nice weather and we've got old people standing out in the cold waiting to get their vaccine because of these delays”

If you're looking for a reason for the government hasn't been regularly releasing the numbers of people who are vaccinated, this issue is probably it

I don’t want to speculate too much but from what I’m told the figures put out today may be *very* provisional

But the other issue is potentially much bigger

Call and recall is absolutely central to delivery of a vaccine - and multiple sources, including Dr Singer, say there isn't a call and recall system for the vaccination programme

It was asked for months ago, but it hasn't arrived

If call and recall goes wrong, then people could get missed or even (although this is very unlikely) double dosed

That’s not happening now (we hope) because GPs have figured out workarounds. But, just as with the data recording, the real cost is time

None of the systems talk to each other, so Dr Singer’s admin staff are making appointments with one system, then manually entering them into another, then doing it all again for the second vaccine

Lots of potential for mistakes. Lots of wasted time

This is still early days and I'm assured by people close to the system that things will improve

But we've heard that before - and in the meantime, time is passing, just when we need things to move quickly

More here in written form
news.sky.com/story/covid-19…

And in TV form if that’s your thing
Thanks as ever to the incredible team who turned such unpromising material into telly
Producer: @SkyNewsValerie
Editor: Alf Bowles
Camera: Martin Smith
Graphics: Jonathan Toolan

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1339359047691214851

Shout out to @RichardVaughan1 and @DavidParsleyPW who've been doing fantastic work in this area. Some great reporting here in particular inews.co.uk/news/health/co…

In case you missed my story about the technical issues with the vaccine rollout, here it is - now with an updated comment from NHS England
news.sky.com/story/covid-19…

And here is @JonAshworth asking about it earlier in the House of Commons parliamentlive.tv/event/index/00…