Vicky Walker spoke with Damian Brady in September 2021 at the Downham Vaccination Hub.
TRANSCRIPT
Vicky Walker: Hi, this is Vicky Walker with Lewisham Vaccination Stories, and it is a cool September afternoon, and I am here at the Downham Vaccination Hub with the King of the Hub, Damian Brady.
So, Damian, how the hell do you set up a vaccination hub from scratch?
Damian Brady: (Laughter) With great difficulty, especially when you don’t know what it is you are actually going to be doing at the other end because we were setting them up and we had no national guidance. We had nothing. So what we did was, we basically wrote an implementation plan.
The first hub I set up was at St John’s Medical Centre way, way, way back in December 2020. We set up an implementation plan, spent a lot of time with the GP, Chrisanthan Ferdinand, whose wife is Nikki Kanani, who is the director of Primary Care for England. She is amazing.
He did have an inside line and was coming down the track. That did help us in terms of our planning because we knew some of the things that we would need to do before they were officially out there, so it did give us a little bit more lead time than other people, for which we are eternally grateful.
As I said, we put our plan together. We modelled a lot of what we did off what we knew from the flu vaccination programme, and then as more and more information was revealed about how COVID would be handled, the shelf life of Pfizer — effectively 3½ days for us by the time it comes out of the fridge and gets to us, we kept tweaking it to reflect the reality that we got every single day.
For an example, we opened on a Wednesday. We were very excited. We had our patients come in. And then, two days later, we were told we had to have 15-minute observations, and our site is not built for 15-minute observations. It is a large practice with a small waiting room, and we had to convert every clinical room on the floor, and while we were in sort of full-on processing mode into waiting.
It was a challenge with a result that … Yes, it was a very iterative learning process. However, it did help us because we were setting up the Lewisham sites one at a time.
The Jenner was being set up by the Modality Group Practice. We were able to share the learning in a Teams group with them, the tools, the plans, everything.
At the same time, the guys over at Sydenham Green who were working at the PCN. We didn’t do anything physical for them. We ordered a few bits and pieces for them, but again, we shared the template plan with them, what our learning and experience was. We went to the other sites and explained the rate and flow of patients they could reasonably expect to work through the building.
So, for example, the Jenner had a very catastrophic first day.
Vicky Walker: We saw that on the news.
Damian Brady: You did see that on the news.
Vicky Walker: And that put the fear up everybody.
Damian Brady: It did.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: It scared the living bejesus out of everyone. (Laughter)
Because they were the second site to go live in Lewisham, and we had told them our experience of the first days of vaccination was the over-80s –that was our target group and the most at risk — (a) they turn up early, (b) they case the joint the day before, (c) they have a lot of mobility challenges.
Vicky Walker: They like to sit down, if they can.
Damian Brady: Oh, they love to sit down. And making them wait in the rain is not a good look, which we nearly experienced at St John’s. And we said, “You have got one lift. A very small one going up to the first floor where you are doing your vaccinations. That will limit how many people you can do. Please don’t do what you are planning on doing.”
They did, with the result, there were half-mile queues down Stanstead Road. It was on the telly. We learned very, very quickly that they needed a gazebo as a waiting room, which they immediately acquired.
But we made mistakes on the journey, which we would because it was just so new and the rules were changing every second day, but we did try to share our experience with the next site coming on live, so at least their experience was less painful.
The next site that I set up with colleagues was at the Waldron in New Cross. A very painless experience at the Waldron, even though —
Vicky Walker: Well, it is perfectly set up as a vaccination centre, the way it is laid out.
Damian Brady: It is a lot of space down there.
We had Rishi Sunak doing a visit the first day we opened. We were running perfectly to time. Everything was like clockwork.
It was like the dream opening of a vaccination site, until Rishi Sunak turned up, and then we realised that some of the GPs had actually been at college and university with Rishi Sunak. They all downed tools. They all talked to Rishi. GPs came in from other practices that weren’t on duty that day to talk to Rishi.
Vicky Walker: What about our little old ladies who had been waiting for their jabs in the rain and the cold?
Damian Brady: They weren’t waiting in the rain and the cold at the Waldron because we had nice big waiting rooms.
Vicky Walker: Okay.
Damian Brady: But we got to the point where we were probably three or four minutes away from asking people to wait outside in the cold and the rain, and we finally threw Rishi out of the building.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: We brought in some extra staff to clear the backlog. (Laughter) But after that, the Waldron — to be fair, has run very well. It is a good site to use. There is a lot of waiting space.
That first day, it was a very cold day. It was -2 degrees outside. The air con decided to activate itself, which didn’t help. It turned our main waiting room into a fridge, so we had to decant people left, right, and centre.
We had some very interesting experiences early days, but we made it work and the learning from the Waldron was that bringing in volunteers made a massive difference.
Vicky Walker: Well, that was where I was going to jump in and say obviously, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened without the volunteers, and you, and everybody in Lewisham recruited an enormous number of volunteers. Did you just have faith that it was going to work out?
Damian Brady: Yes, we had faith. My background is in the charity sector, and I know what volunteers can do, and I know what a powerful weapon (laughter) in our armoury it was going to be for this.
When people were asking us what the model was going to be for the Waldron and for Downham, I said, “We use volunteers. We simply cannot take that many people out of our practices and still provide a meaningful service for our patients.”
Vicky Walker: And they were all overwhelmed anyway because of COVID, and lockdown, and everything.
Damian Brady: Absolutely. So, we took a punt. We talked to Philippe Granger and Sam over at Lewisham Local. We wrote what we thought was a good pitch to the people of Lewisham.It was too good, if I am being honest, and we had no infrastructure.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: This was all being done by the PCNs who have no legal form, even though they exist, which is those little networks of practices working together. And we put the adverts out and we had 1,200 applications within the first 48 hours. All on my phone, my work phone.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter) Your phone is bad enough anyway.
Damian Brady: It is horrible.
And on the email address — because we hadn’t time to set up an email address specifically for this. So, the first person we hired — because we decided we needed some help, we hired a care coordinator to help with the volunteers.
So, Juliette came on board up at Downham because that was the next site going live, and she helped us basically screen all of those people, get DBSs in place, get the training in place, build the rosters. A huge task, but it worked, and it has worked brilliantly.
The people of Lewisham — in the end, we had to send out a message saying, “Look, you are just too good.” And when we got to about 2,500, we said we had to stop.
We took a big chunk — probably about 700 that have worked for the 5 sites in Lewisham, and the remainder we got back in touch with them and we asked them, “The hospital also need help for a number of different things including their own vaccination site,” and we said, “Look, if you are willing to help us… We have just run out of space, but the hospital needs you just as much as we do.”
Vicky Walker: Yes, I was going to ask about that because I know I have spoken to people who have said, “Oh, I never got a call, so I went and did this, and that,” and they did some other things. But it shows that there is a great number of people who are willing to help that have —
Damian Brady: Oh, absolutely.
Vicky Walker: Do you know that they have gone to food banks or Age UK?
Damian Brady: We have no idea. Once we told them that we were full, effectively, and that they should go to the hospital, we couldn’t follow it up. There was just a sheer volume of people wanting to volunteer. It was drowning us — you know, at the time when we were in the process of trying to open up our last site in Downham.
And on the basis that we were going to try and have all the volunteers ready, we did the ask for volunteers in the second week of January. We went live in Downham in the fourth week of January.
Vicky Walker: The 15th of January.
Damian Brady: Well, live full tilt for volunteers.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: We started with primary care staff, but that was not sustainable, and as soon as we could bring the volunteers on board, we effectively faded our primary care staff out — so the reception staff and so on who had been helping us, you know, and forever grateful, to get us up and running, and bringing the volunteers into the points, where in mid-February, we had volunteers doing our admin.
We had volunteers doing all of our stewarding. We had volunteers doing our vaccinating. We had volunteers helping us and Voluntary Services Lewisham, the community transport provided our transport for our patients. Without them, we wouldn’t have got through this. And the practices and myself were just eternally grateful because otherwise, we just wouldn’t have got through this.
People were looking at it as a sprint in January, thinking, “Yes, we will be over this in no time.” And then one jab became two jabs, became one month, became six months.
We will still be jabbing next January, which will mean we have been doing it over a year.
Vicky Walker: Right, it is not over.
Damian Brady: It is a marathon. It is not over.
Vicky Walker: So, going back to January, what would you tell the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed version of Damian in January –what you know now, what would you tell that Damian?
Damian Brady: (a) Get as much sleep as you can in January, because you won’t get it later.
I would say, “Hold your nerve with volunteers because it will work.”
We were challenged with lots of places around… you know, there was a national volunteer offer, but we know from later experience that doesn’t work and we were challenged on, “They can’t do this. They can’t do vaccinations.”
We have been challenged on every step about bringing in volunteers — our community, into help the rest of our community. And, “Hold your nerve. It will be fine. Stop stressing about it quite so much.”
I would also tell him that, “One day, you will have Pfizer that doesn’t go off after 3½ days.” (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: And that, “It is okay to run around the community when you are on your last day of Pfizer trying to get rid of the last 50 shots.”
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: Running into barbers, and kebab shops, and chip shops, and the pub, and the Co-op, trying to get people. “It is okay. It is better in an arm than in a bin.” (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: Exactly. I have been there at the Waldron where they have run up. “Oh, the train is coming into New Cross Station. Quick, leg it up there. Drag somebody in.”
Damian Brady: It has to be done. We just did not want to throw things in the bin. It just did not make any sense. And the evolution over the vaccines over the last nine months, it is partially comical in a way.
When we first started vaccinating, we had Pfizer, and that was it, and people knew that AstraZeneca was coming, and it was, “No, I will wait for AstraZeneca.”
Vicky Walker: Yes, “I want the British one.”
Damian Brady: “I want the British one. Two world wars that I fought in. I want me some proper British vaccine, lad.”
Then we had AZ, and it was incredibly popular. We couldn’t give people Pfizer for love nor money. And then, some stories started to spread — you know, there was some grounding in it, but the risks are very, very low in reality.
Vicky Walker: Compared to the risks from getting COVID.
Damian Brady: Yes, you know, when you compare it to the risk of what can happen if you get COVID.
Then, everybody wanted Pfizer and nobody wanted AZ. (Laughter) And the sea change was almost immediate and a complete role reversal.
Whereas, we couldn’t shift Pfizer for love nor money. Now, we couldn’t shift AstraZeneca for love nor money.
Vicky Walker: Yes, people were getting up out of the chairs and leaving. “No. I am not having that one. No.”
Damian Brady: “I am not having that one.” So, it was quite amusing that something could flip in the public perception so quickly, when in fact —
And in all reality, yes, there is probably a mildly elevated risk with AZ, but a vaccine is a vaccine and it gives a very high degree of protection.
And having worked in the COVID hub — because I also set the COVID hot hubs up for the borough for people who we think have COVID and were coming in to be diagnosed, I have seen those people blue-lighted because their oxygen saturation levels are at critical — you know, at any point, they could collapse and die.
And I have been on the COVID wards. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
And I see the anti-vaxxers on the streets, even where I live in Carshalton, and having been on the wards so often, they are full of people who look like you, anti-vax people. They are full of people who look like you.
And I have seen all the sort of deathbed repentances from people who were anti-vax and who have caught COVID and they have got really, really ill, they have been on ITU and they have eventually passed away — you know, that deathbed conversion to, “Maybe I should have had the vaccine. It is a bit late.”
So, I would just urge everybody… There are mild risks — you know, there are risks with everything in life, but at the end of the day, for AZ, your risk of something going wrong is 0.0004%. If you get COVID, your risk of getting the blood clots — which is the thing going wrong, is 18.5%.
Vicky Walker: Exactly.
Damian Brady: You know, a betting man would say, “I might be better off with the vaccine.”
Vicky Walker: And we promise we will get it in your arm as fast as we can and as painlessly as we can.
But, yes, Dr Alison Webster who came here — she works at Lewisham casualty, I saw her a couple of weeks ago and she said, “Yes, everyone in my ICU is younger and unvaccinated.”
Damian Brady: Yes. So, in Sutton, for example, where I work, I support the vaccination programme there. So, now their hospital has 33 people this week in intensive care with COVID. There is 1 who is vaccinated. Everyone else is unvaccinated and they are all under 40.
Vicky Walker: Wow.
Damian Brady: Just because you are younger it does not make you invincible. You might feel it. You are not invincible. It doesn’t discriminate in terms of age. It might have a lower rate of who it gets in the younger ages, but it does catch people. You don’t want it to be you, you know. It is a risk you don’t need to run.
Vicky Walker: Is there anything else we can do to combat the misinformation, do you think? We have been battling against it all year. We have gone from vaccine resistance, reluctance, to outright refusal.
Damian Brady: I would say GPs genuinely care about their patients. So do the nurses. So do all the staff in the practices.
They would not be asking people to get vaccinated if they didn’t genuinely believe it was the right thing to do. They have had to sign the death certificates for people in care homes and in other places that have died because of COVID, they don’t want to have to sign any of those unnecessarily — you know, simply because somebody chose not to be vaccinated, didn’t consider themselves high-risk, didn’t get it, did get very ill, and did die.
For them, that is an unnecessary death, and a painful one. You know, your GPs do still have a link with their communities. Most people know their GP. They have the same GP. They see them all the time. You forget that those GPs remember you.
The worst point of the pandemic for me was when we were in the middle of the care home crisis.
So, one of my GPs — who I will leave nameless, he will know if he hears this, he will know who it is — is the dedicated GP for one of our care homes. He went in on a Thursday to a care home where older people — over the course of the last two years, he had got to know a lot of them, as you do, because he does a weekly ward round. He diagnosed six of his care home patients as having COVID.
That was the Thursday, roughly around lunchtime. He went in at 2 o’clock on the Friday and he wrote six death certificates —
Vicky Walker: Wow.
Damian Brady: –for the six people whose diagnosis he had done the previous day. GPs don’t want to have to do that. Even when it is older people, they don’t want to have to do it.
If they are doing it — like one of my GPs here at ICO did, has to sign a death certificate for a 15-year-old. It gets people at all ages. A slightly less chance when you are young, but you don’t want to be the unlucky one. So, for God’s sake, get vaccinated.
Vicky Walker: And just the older people coming in from January onwards, some of them were delighted to be there and some of them were really angry and they were saying, “I have been locked up in my house. I have come for my jab. I am doing my bit. Why aren’t they doing their bit?”
Damian Brady: I would fully agree with them.
So, we had people coming in in January, February, and March for their first jab, older people. The first time they had been out of the house. And you will know…
Vicky Walker: Yes, they tell you the exact day that they had–
Damian Brady: Yes, and they can tell you the day, and they were coming in in full make-up, dressed up because it was the first time they had been out of the house.
And we had a 15-minute observation thing to do. We had a struggle to get them out of observation because a lot of them were meeting people from their practice that lived nearby, wanted to have a chat — you know, alright, socially distanced–
Vicky Walker: If only we could make them a cup of tea. (Laughter)
Damian Brady: We couldn’t make them a cup of tea, as much as we would have liked to because we couldn’t run the infection control risk because it means taking your mask down.
All of those things were just… It was really incredible to see them all come in and making the effort. It was important to them.
And having seen how many were dying in our care homes — you know, to see older people getting vaccinated, giving themselves the degrees of protection that they could.
But the biggest risk to them was younger people who did not get vaccinated and spread it to them. That is what was happening in the care homes.
And people talk about the government thing, about discharging people into care homes that had vaccines. The homes tried to insulate themselves against that.
The big problem was younger care staff who were not vaccinated when they had the opportunity, particularly agency staff, going from home to home. When they got it, they spread it everywhere, and that was a feature right across the country.
And, for me, I know they are in the caring profession, but that is a really selfish thing to do — you know, to know that you are at a much higher risk of catching COVID and giving it to people who are more vulnerable, whose level of resistance- even with the vaccine, is not 100 percent. And being in an enclosed space with them and giving them a viral load which overcomes the protection of the vaccine, that is just pure selfishness.
It is not just about our own personal choice. It is a society choice. We have to protect each other.
So, the whole thing is one of the things that distinguishes us in our evolutionary journey from the trees to where we are today, is that we look out for each other, and large chunks of our population have decided not to look out for each other. You wait until you are old, when it is your time.
Vicky Walker: People forget that. If you are lucky, you will get to be old, and you may be decrepit, and then you are going to realise that we need each other, and we need to help each other because right now, your selfishness is obscuring everything. Yes.
Two weeks ago here, I vaccinated an ICU nurse. She worked with patients with tracheotomies at the end of life, and I just looked at her and she was like, “Oh, I have just come because I have been told I have got to.”
Damian Brady: Yes. And actually, if you are working with such vulnerable groups of people — I know that the idea of compulsory vaccination is not particularly popular, but there is something — we have a responsibility to people who are that vulnerable to protect them.
And actually, the little bit of personal freedom you give up in that choice, it is what makes us a society and a civilisation. It is, you give up a bit to enhance the whole. And, in turn, when you are older, somebody will give it up for you too, and you would expect them to do it when you are older.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: So, (Laughter) you know… “There is no such thing as society,” was something Margaret Thatcher said a long, long time ago.
Vicky Walker: Oh.
Damian Brady: I am a bit lefty here. I apologise. But actually, there is such a thing as society, and we should protect each other, and we should work for the common good.
My protest would be, if it was your mum, would you want the people who were supporting her and taking care of her vaccinated? Yes. Are you nuts? Of course I would.
So, that would be my expectation. It is a standard I set for myself. I am not particularly keen to be vaccinated, but I did, and I did it in the first wave simply because it is the, “Would I do this? If that is my mum, would I want to be unvaccinated? No.” So, it is the —
Vicky Walker: We’ve got you on camera doing it as well.
Damian Brady: You have indeed got me on camera.
Vicky Walker: Yes, yes.
Damian Brady: And I don’t like needles. I don’t look. (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: You should become a vaccinator. You’ll get over your fear of needles.
Damian Brady: Oh, no, no, no, no. I couldn’t be a vaccinator. I think it is too hard a job. And I take my hat off to the vaccinators, the volunteers particularly — you know, to go into something where you have no experience. You could be a baker. You could have been working in banking. You could have been working in… We have lots of people who have worked in retail in different ways, project managers.
Vicky Walker: We’ve got musicians.
Damian Brady: Musicians. Librarians.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: We have all sorts of walks of life who went into something that is really distant from their comfort zone, did the online training, did the practical training and did it, and I just take my hat off. I couldn’t do that. I just wouldn’t have the confidence.
So, it is a really big commitment to make and the people at Lewisham owe those volunteers a lot.
Vicky Walker: We couldn’t all sit at home doing nothing. It felt important to take a small role, even if we were just standing outside in the cold saying, “Go in there and turn right and then…” Yes. So–
Damian Brady: You have got to think, “Every bit helps.” Even when you were saying, “Well, go in there and turn right,” it does matter, but it does.
So, for example, you take the Waldron. It is a brilliant site, but it (laughter) is lots of really long corridors.
Vicky Walker: You’re right. It’s like a maze.
Damian Brady: And lots of rooms. It is a rabbit warren. And people need to be able to find their way around the building — and signs only take you so far, particularly if it is not your first language, or your eyesight is not particularly brilliant. There are lots of reasons why the signs don’t work.
But you also need to keep people moving at a reasonable pace, and a reasonable pace for an 85-year-old is not the same as a reasonable pace for a 60-year-old.
So, you have to tweak things, depending on who is coming in. But if we don’t keep that pace going, it means we don’t get people vaccinated fast enough to protect them.
So, the volunteers made it a really nice experience — you know, you look at the comments wall here, or the online forms, and the comments that were provided down at the Waldron, and St John’s, and other places, people were really grateful. They thought it was organised with military precision. And we did have military vaccinators. The Jenner particularly had the army come in several times.
Vicky Walker: I never saw any of those.
Damian Brady: Yes, we didn’t really need them here at Downham because we had such a strong community response in terms of volunteering. Less so in some of the more affluent bits of our borough.
Vicky Walker: Dare I say, yes.
Damian Brady: So, the Jenner did use the army several times to come in and do big chunks of vaccinations.
Vicky Walker: Were they in camouflage? They weren’t, were they? (Laughter) Get vaccinated on a tank.
Damian Brady: No, they were not. (Laughter) They were not vaccinating on a tank. (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: But all the help was appreciated. But actually, our community was the thing that turned this round for us because people volunteered en masse and we … We had people who came to volunteer who were wheelchair bound. We had people who came to volunteer who had never volunteered in their life, hadn’t worked for some time because of illness or disability. We had people who have retired, done their stints in whatever.
When we decided we wanted to vaccinate the homeless population, we were really struggling for clinicians, and the whole of A&E at Lewisham Hospital put their hand up and said, “We will come out.”
Vicky Walker: Brilliant.
Damian Brady: “I don’t want to get paid, and we will help you be the clinical vaccinators and the clinical leads for your homeless vaccinations,” and they did it.
(cellphone rings)
Vicky Walker: That is a classic. “Iron Man” is the theme of Damian’s phone. I am surprised it hasn’t rung throughout this interview, frankly.
Damian Brady: (Laughter) It has calmed down. Now that we are in the gap between phase two and phase three, just about to do boosters, it is not as bad as it used to be, but most people in the vaccination centre know that tune because it would go off every couple of minutes.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: Because everything was so reactive and, “The vaccine hasn’t turned up,” which was… But one day, we nearly ran out of vaccine and people were chasing the lorry down the road, “You’re going to the wrong place. Bring our vaccine back.” (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: I remember standing out there and you going, “It’s still in Brighton and we start at noon!”
Damian Brady: (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: So, looking ahead — so, when you are older and grizzled and wiser, how are you going to look back on this vaccination programme?
Damian Brady: I will look back at it with pride.
So, halfway through this programme, I got a job in Sutton. So, I work five days a week in Sutton. I do a bit of work for the CCG in terms of vaccine planning, but I spent quite a few months just coming back to help out the programme. I didn’t have to, but I just wanted to.
I think that the sites in Lewisham, and the GPs, and the volunteers, and the staff who have been picked up to work in the sites, it made for a fantastic team with fantastic experience, and I wanted to be there to experience it, to put my little bit into it. I have got my NHS volunteer badge on still. (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: How many membership cards have you got? (Laughter)
Damian Brady: I have lots for different boroughs and different things. But the one I always wear is my NHS volunteer, because that is effectively what I have done with vaccinations for the last, whatever, six months, and I will look back with pride on it.
And pride in my fellow people, that so many people put their hand up and said, “Yes, I will stand up and be counted and I will do this with you,” and from so many different walks of life. We had people who hadn’t worked for many, many years. We had people who had experienced mental health and couldn’t hold a job down, but they came and they volunteered with us. We have helped people get into work.
It has just been an amazing experience, and we have had people from city bankers, ex-army, all sorts of — you know, the strange and wonderful people.
So, we have got a guy who runs effectively a huge investment fund. He doesn’t have to do this. He has got plenty of money and whatever. He is ex-army, though, so he believes in that thing about community and being in a team. He came in. He was amazing for the first few weeks when we needed some discipline about just getting ourselves organised — you know, Ed won’t mind me using his name.
(Laughter)
Ed organised it. It took the flipping bejesus out of us. And we would put him at the main contact point where we put people in chairs to get them vaccinated.
Vicky Walker: That is why we call him Captain Ed.
Damian Brady: He is Captain Ed.
And just everybody did their little bit. No matter how small it was, it was like a machine. It was great having 168 moving parts in our machine, but only one of those parts didn’t need to work and the whole thing would jam. And the parts worked, day after day, week after week, month after month.
As you have said, we have been open here since the 15th of January in Downham. It was the 17th of December down in St John’s. We are in early September, and we are still going, and it is still volunteer-powered. It is people-powered. And without that, it just wouldn’t have worked.
Vicky Walker: Even though lots of them have had to go back to work, some of them are still taking time to come on weekends or fit in.
Damian Brady: Yes. We have got people taking days off. We have got people coming in at weekends. People pressing us to open in the evenings (Laughter) so they can volunteer in the evenings. And it is amazing.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter) It is so much fun. It is so much fun and it is really rewarding.
Damian Brady: Yes. The highlight for me has been doing the over 80s.
Vicky Walker: Me too.
Damian Brady: They were amazing. The amount of metalwork and the Zimmer frames, and buggies, and wheelchairs. People got here — you know, our housebound population generally can’t leave their homes, but they were so desperate to get here.
We provided the transport, their families, their friends, their carers provided transport. Sixty percent of them got in here. They probably shouldn’t have, but they would be damned if they weren’t going to get jabbed. And the efforts they made to get jabbed were amazing.
We had one old lady come in. I think she was 104.
Vicky Walker: Two. One hundred and two.
Damian Brady: Hundred and two, and she came in and basically, “Do you want some help?” And she was moving at like 0.00001 miles an hour with two walking sticks.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: And her basic response was, “Bleep you, I got here under my own steam.” (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: Yes. (Laughter)
Damian Brady: (Laughter) “I am getting into the building on my own steam, and I am leaving under my own steam.” And you have just got to take–
One of the guys was trying to bring over a wheelchair, and there was just a dirty look they got.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: “No, I got here under my own steam.” And the pride and the determination of people to get down here.
Vicky Walker: She came in for her second later on, and she came with a friend who was 30 years younger, and she was helping the younger woman to walk.
Damian Brady: Wow.
Vicky Walker: So, I hope we see her for her third.
Damian Brady: I hope to see her for her third as well. She was a character and a half.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: But this is what has made it amazing. The older people were just fabulous. They were just grateful that the local community was turning out in numbers to do all the volunteering, get all the vaccinations done, drive them to the sites — you know, make it a nice experience.
One of the things we have at the … a bit of pride on the sites. We don’t like queues, and I think there has only been two days where we have had queues. Once when we had that issue when we ran out of vaccine, but we have everyone sitting down for that day.
So, the big days were when we made a mistake of doing a walk-in session for health and social care staff in the second week of vaccinations.
Vicky Walker: Oh, yes.
Damian Brady: And 700 of them turned up (Laughter) at 2 o’clock. All at the same time, pretty much.
Vicky Walker: We can usually do 300 a shift. So that was a bit tricky. Yes.
Damian Brady: Yes, we had done 200 that morning. It wasn’t 700. I think it was about 450 turned up in the afternoon, but they all turned up at 4 o’clock and we did 750 people that day and they were all health and care staff and it was a bit, “Whoa, this too much.”
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: So, that was a bit of a challenge.
And then, we had another walk-in day. And walk-ins are always difficult where you just say, “Turn up,” because you can’t legislate for how many people turn up. So, walk-ins have been difficult.
But all of our days when we are doing normal booked appointments, we don’t have queues. The guys start 10 minutes early, if they can, so that anyone who has come early is done before we officially open, and people stay late to get it done when we have had that spare vaccine knocking around.
We have had the Launcelot School on speed dial. We have had other schools on speed dial where we can just go, “Right, we have got six spare shots. The first six to get here get it done.”
Vicky Walker: We have done everybody in the Co-op. We have done everybody in the chippy.
Damian Brady: Yes, the chippy, the kebab shop, the bookies. You name it, we have been in there.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: The bus queue. (Laughter)
Vicky Walker: Now the pub is open, we can go in the pub again and just say, “Come and get your jab.”
Damian Brady: Yes.
Vicky Walker: Although I believe that is not recommended because if you have had a drink … Yes, okay.
Damian Brady: Yes, it is not the best. Informed consent could be challenged by somebody with five pints on board.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: (Laughter) Possibly not a great idea.
Vicky Walker: So, is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like people to know about the Lewisham vaccination programme?
Damian Brady: I would say that the Lewisham vaccination programme is something that we should be proud of. And what I would say is, it wasn’t the staff that made it — and don’t get me wrong, they worked really hard and so on.
Vicky Walker: They are amazing.
Damian Brady: They are amazing. This was Lewisham people-powered, and without them, we wouldn’t have done it. So, Lewisham should be very proud of itself.
Lots of other places didn’t have that, with the result, their practice’s struggles, the mass sites. It was a much more difficult journey for people in other boroughs than it has been in Lewisham. We got everyone done. We got them done fast. We have made so many efforts to get hard to reach people from different communities, different parts of the borough.
Lewisham has moved heaven and earth to get everyone it possibly can vaccinated.
It behaves like an inner-city borough. So you can, kind of, predict where we should be in terms of vaccinations and so on, but we have left all of our inner city borough brethren way behind.
Vicky Walker: Have we really?
Damian Brady: Yes. In terms of vaccinations, we are more like an out of London borough simply because-
Vicky Walker: I am very proud.
Damian Brady: You know, this borough has killed itself trying to get everyone vaccinated.
Vicky Walker: There is a lot of exhausted people in Lewisham right now, but it was worth it. It was definitely worth it.
Damian Brady: I think it was worth it, and the fact that we have such a high vaccination rate, given our demographic profile, is testament to the people who have worked bloody hard to get to everyone. We have had buses out jabbing people. We have gone out to the mosque. We have gone out to churches. We have gone out to anywhere that will have us — in terms of, “Let’s park up in front of the bus station. Let’s go on to Deptford Market.” We are not proud. We will go where people are.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter)
Damian Brady: And we have done everything, to the point where every other around us will phone us up and say, “How are you getting so many people done off a bus?” or, “How did this go?” and, “How come you guys have got so many of your homeless vaccinated?”
Because we worked really hard to get to everybody. No one was getting left behind. It wouldn’t be for lack of not knowing where the options were.
Vicky Walker: Are you sharing that with other boroughs then and saying, “Do it like we did. Throw resources at it.”?
Damian Brady: All the time. All the time. All the time. I mean, I steal Lewisham ideas because Sutton is a proper old-school outer London borough and it has got the highest vaccination rate in London, 90%+, and they only really got into the hard to reach groups in the last couple of months, and all the ideas — They would say, “How do we do this?” And I would just go to my little Lewisham folder and I would go, “In Lewisham…” To the point where I get fined £1 if I say “Lewisham” any more and not “Sutton.”
Vicky Walker: Hey. Excellent. (Laughter)
Damian Brady: So, they may have a slightly higher vaccination rate than us, but we had to work a lot harder for ours, and we are showing them how to reach their homeless groups, their BAME communities, and so on. They are stealing all the ideas from Lewisham because we pioneered it all.
So, Lewisham should be really proud, staff and volunteers. People-powered, that is what it was.
Vicky Walker: Thank you very much, Damian, and thank you for leading us through the maelstrom of chaos and vaccination. It is…
Damian Brady: Yes. I can assure you that people will have seen some the difficulties and whatever with vaccinations.
There are days we feel like the people at the very, very top are sitting round their planning table in wherever it is, Richmond House or the House of Commons, wearing a clown’s shoes, full clown make-up, a clown wig, a clown nose.
Vicky Walker: (Laughter) It doesn’t need a wig.
Damian Brady: Because that is the only thing that explains some of the things that we have had to experience and suffer for the last nine months. But we have got there. We have got there.
And boosters are next, and flu jabs for everybody. And then, maybe we will come out the other side of this and we can chalk it down to history. We need to somehow give people a memento of all the volunteers who have worked in this. So, we are working on that. There needs to be something to remember in 10, 15 years’ time — you know, when their grandkids say, “Oh, that pandemic thing. What did you do?” They can honestly say —
Vicky Walker: Find a badge in the drawer.
Damian Brady: “I did this. I did my bit.”
Vicky Walker: Exactly.
Damian Brady: So, thank you for the chance to-
Vicky Walker: Thank you very much. And you haven’t said “We are winning” for a while. Are we winning?
Damian Brady: We are winning.
Vicky Walker: We are winning.
Damian Brady: And I haven’t said “Schnell! Schnell! Raus!” either, because anyone who vaccinated in the first three months will know-
Vicky Walker: That is true.
Damian Brady: Because we were trying to go fast. It was we were running out of our [ ___] (Laughter) to try and get people to go faster, particularly with our older people. It was a bit of a challenge because — you know, they hadn’t been out of the house.
Vicky Walker: They have got to take off all their clothes, Well, not all their clothes.
Damian Brady: For so long. It was like the first time they had seen their GP in nine months. All they wanted to do was have a chat.
Vicky Walker: Yes.
Damian Brady: Whereas, all we wanted to do was get a needle in and get the person waiting behind them have a needle in too.
So, yes, that was an interesting tension between getting as many done as possible, but still doing it in a very kind way.
Vicky Walker: Brilliant.
Damian Brady: And I think we got the balance right in Lewisham.
Vicky Walker: We did.
Damian Brady: So, we should be very proud of ourselves.
Vicky Walker: And it continues. So, thank you very much.
Damian Brady: Thank you.
Vicky Walker: Thank you.