Ramsey Commissioners chair Andy Cowie has called for a permanent vaccination hub to be based in the town.

He said that the ’permanent fixture’ could serve both Ramsey and the north as a whole, but acknowledged that it would be subject to the logistics of the number of vaccines and medical staff that are available.

He voiced his support for local hubs as a means of reducing queues at the two existing hubs at Ronaldsway and Chester Street, as well as being a ’far better’ solution for those who have difficultly travelling across the island to these sites.

This second permanent vaccination hub at the site of the former supermarket in Chester Street, Douglas, was opened this Monday.

Its first day of operation saw around 460 people receive their first and second vaccine doses.

Mr Cowie went on to say that he suspected that the long queues at Ronaldsway could have been influenced by the fact that people had to travel so far to get there and so may have set off earlier to make allowance for this.

Ramsey MHK Lawrie Hooper recently criticised the Department of Health and Social Care over the lack of transport arrangements to enable Northern residents to get to the main hubs, arguing that eldery residents would be left having to resort to long bus journeys.

Mr Cowie went on to point to the UK, where the government pledged to ensure that every person in the country would be within 10 miles of a vaccination facility by mid-February - a target which on the island would ’immediately preclude the entire north’ considering the location of the Ballasalla and Douglas hubs.

According to the NHS website, this target has now been achieved for 97% of the UK population.

Last week, a temporary ’pop-up’ hub at Ramsey Cottage Hospital saw the vaccination of 200 northern residents, which was welcomed by Mr Cowie who said it had been ’very successful’ and ’a great thing for the north’.

The government stated that the pop-up hub had enabled the vaccination of people who were unable to travel far.

It was staffed by the same nurses who had been operating the airport hub.

The DHSC has also been rolling out home visits to vaccinate those who are housebound.

Asked about other potential hubs in the north, Mr Cowie said he hoped that local vaccination provision would continue, and when asked about places like Jurby, he agreed that it would be suitable as a ’nice, modern facility’ which would be ’very useful’.

During last Friday’s Coronavirus briefing, Health Minister David Ashford reported that over 11% of the island’s population had received their first vaccine dose, and 4% had received both doses.