YORK’S Covid mass vaccination centre is to open for 16 hours instead of 12 hours a day - and up to four new satellite clinics are to open across the city - as part of an ‘extraordinary effort’ to double the number of booster jabs to try to beat the Omicron variant.

The coordinator of the centre at Askham Bar, Professor Mike Holmes, has called on the people of York to ‘dig deep and help us get this done'.

Writing in his weekly column for The Press, he said: “We’re looking for volunteers to support us, we need more clinicians to do the jabbing, and most of all, we need people to come forward for their booster dose if they are 18 or over and it is 12 weeks since their second dose.”

He said the first vaccines were delivered in the ‘Tent of Hope’ one year ago, with staff from nearby St Leonard’s Hospice welcomed as its first patients.

“It’s incredible that one year on we’re still working harder than ever,” he said.

“We’re a 12 hour a day, seven day a week operation and we’re now expanding on this further to meet the new targets.

“As the country battles with a new Covid variant and we see our alert level raised this week, here in York we join the national mission to give more people their booster. The target now is for everyone eligible aged 18 or over to get their booster vaccine by the end of this year.

“It’s clear that we need to make an extraordinary effort to achieve this. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.”

He said that to do this, other areas would be challenged.

“To accelerate the booster programme and bring forward the national target – seven weeks condensed into three, we need to double the number we vaccinate at the moment,” he said.

“This is a huge challenge which requires our already pressured NHS workforce to work even harder.

“Here in York we’re planning to do at least 10,000 vaccinations per day.

“We’re increasing our capacity at our Askham Bar Vaccination Centre and extending its opening hours to 6am until 10pm, seven days a week.

“In addition to this, we will be opening up to four new satellite vaccination clinics in the city which will open from 8am until 8pm from this Wednesday delivering up to 1,500 vaccinations at each one per day. Appointments are bookable only, via nhs.uk.

“I’m calling on the people of York to dig deep and help us get this done.

“I’m also asking for people to be patient, kind and respectful. We’re only human and we won’t always get it right.”