Westminster is sixth lowest in the country and Kensington and Chelsea the eighth, with only about 40 per cent of residents aged 12 and older having had two jabs and a booster.(PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)London boroughs with low vaccination rates hope a new system allowing residents to record jabs received abroad will lift them off the bottom of the Covid league table.
Westminster is sixth lowest in the country and Kensington and Chelsea the eighth, with only about 40 per cent of residents aged 12 and older having had two jabs and a booster.
But both councils have long claimed that many residents have been missed by the official NHS count because only vaccines given in the UK were included.
Now vaccines administered in many parts of Europe and the US can be added to their NHS data - boosting their home borough’s tally, allowing them to obtain a “Covid passport” and potentially enabling them to receive a booster jab.
A total of 13 vaccine validation sites have opened across London, including at the Science Museum in South Kensington, Brent civic centre, Gordon hospital in Westminster, Westfield vaccination centre in Stratford and King’s College hospital in Denmark Hill.
Cllr Cem Kemahli, Kensington and Chelsea’s lead member for public health, visited the Science Museum this week and was told its validation service - with 72 appointments a day - was fully booked for the next three weeks.
“We have 1,500 people with jabs in arms now coming onto the [NHS] server,” he said. “That is at least one jab per person to be registered. It may be two. It may be three.
“In our borough we’ve done nearly 300,000 vaccines. We will have between 1,500 and 4,500 jabs to add to the total. That’s a one per cent uptick immediately.”
The validation service is open to people aged 16 or older who have a NHS number and have received one of the four vaccines approved by the UK - Astra Zeneca (known as Vaxzevria), Pfizer (Comirnaty), Janssen or Moderna (Spikevax).
However, the system does not accept the Chinese CoronaVac (SinoVac) or Russian Sputnik vaccines. CoronaVac has been used widely in many countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Council chiefs say the shortage of validation centres has affected London’s vaccine uptake statistics. It takes less than 10 minutes to register jabs received abroad but appointments have to be booked in advance.
Last year, an initiative by Kensington and Chelsea to improve uptake found that of more than 5,500 supposedly “unvaccinated” residents it contacted, 15 per cent (842) had been vaccinated abroad.
Cllr Kemahli said: “If these figures were replicated across our population, we’d see our vaccinate rate increase significantly.
“I want to encourage our residents who have been vaccinated abroad to get their vaccine validated as soon as possible. If you have had your first or second jab, you’ll be able to get your other vaccinations here.
“This can make it much easier to go on holiday - if you need an up-to-date vaccine passport, you’ll be able to get this through the NHS once your records are updated.”
Validation centres can also be found at Liberty Shopping Centre in Romford, Whipps Cross hospital, Homerton hospital, CP House in Ealing, Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, Bromley Civic Centre, Bidborough House Vaccination Centre in Camden and Hornsey Vaccination Centre.
