MORE than a thousand 16 and 17 year olds got the Covid jab in York in the first week it became available for their age group – and more pop-up vaccination clinics are being planned across the city to encourage even more young people to get vaccinated.

Pop-up clinics are set to be staged at York College and during freshers weeks at the University of York and York St John University, and also in Piccadilly in the city centre.

Professor Mike Holmes, who coordinates York’s mass vaccination programme against Covid, revealed the latest development in his weekly column for The Press.

He writes: “As we opened up the vaccination programme for young people aged 16 and 17, it has been encouraging to see more than 1,100 arrive within the first week for their Covid vaccine.

“We’ve already vaccinated many 16 and 17 year olds in the ‘at risk’ groups during the first months of the vaccination programme as they were included in one of the earlier cohorts.

“Now we are reaching out to those who are classed as ‘healthy’ in order to protect them and their families. These young people can walk in to the Askham Bar vaccination centre or one of our pop-up clinics.”

He said pop-up clinics were planned this weekend at Unity Health’s Kimberlow Surgery near the University of York and at the Jorvik Gillygate surgery from 9am to noon on Saturday.

He said vaccination centre staff were also gearing up to deliver the booster vaccination programme to people over 50 from September and were preparing to support the flu vaccination programme too.

Meanwhile, he said teams continued to run support services for people suffering from ‘Long Covid’ - persistent symptoms that lasted for four weeks or longer after contracting the virus, such as breathlessness, fatigue, pain and general decline in health and wellbeing.

“The symptoms of long covid can be devastating for many people and the NHS is trying hard to better understand people’s complete range of symptoms,” he said.

“Nimbuscare runs the local ‘Single Point of Access’ service, which supports all those people who have been diagnosed with long covid.”