The Chester Street vaccination hub in Douglas opened yesterday - and medics began administering jabs straight away.

About 460 people were booked in for first and second jabs yesterday (Monday).

The site, which was formerly a Shoprite store, has 10 cubicles, a waiting area and a vaccination preparation room.

The Department of Health and Social Care published a video online on Friday for people to see the hub at a glance, with nurse Sam Kneen explaining what to expect for those who are booked in to get their vaccines.

As the Examiner went to press there had been 13,838 vaccines given in total and 7,754 hub vaccinations booked.

The Pfizer/Biontech vaccine continues to be the type administered the most (9,159) and the Astra Zeneca has had 4,679.

Minister for Health David Ashford was at the Chester Street hub.

He said: ’It’s been fabulous, there’s been a large footfall of people already. It’s been really efficient, the staff have pulled out all of the stops to make sure that this has worked today and I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved.

’Things are running smoothly and the efficiency and the preparation that all of the staff have put into this must not be underestimated and it’s been a real team effort across DHSC.

’Many thanks to the Department for Infrastructure for getting this set-up in super-quick time.’

When asked about whether the Isle of Man was still keeping to the guidelines on administering second doses of vaccines, Mr Ashford said: ’For the moment, we’re sticking with 21 days for the Astra Zeneca vaccine. That may change, as the medical team are reviewing the medical evidence about leaving the second dose for longer, and if they do recommend a change then we will do that.’

Mr Ashford said that there will not be any permanent hubs anywhere else apart from Chester Street and Ronaldsway Airport, but that there may be more pop-up clinics.

’There may be more pop-up hubs, such as we saw in Ramsey at the weekend, but we have to remember that the more we split our resource, the more inefficient we become,’ he said. ’With a programme like this where it deals with large volumes of people, it is much more efficient to have central hubs and keep pushing people through. The more we split that off and the more we split our staffing resource, the more inefficient the whole thing becomes and the more we slow [the process] down.’

The Health Minister also said that the island would not be mixing two different vaccines together as it’s not been recommended.

He said: ’There are some vaccines which do mix and match, such as yellow fever, but there’s no scientific data for what happens [afterwards] or how effective it is. At the moment, scientifically it’s not recommended because the trials and the clinical data has purely concentrated on it being the same type.

’There are studies going on now around the world to see what happens, because we do know that with some types of vaccines, mixing "boosts" the efficiency of the vaccine, but it’s early days.’