Covid: BIC in Bournemouth transformed into vaccination hub

The BIC's Purbeck Hall is usually used for concerts and other large events

A Bournemouth concert venue has been transformed into a large Covid vaccination hub.

The Bournemouth International Centre (BIC) - which also hosts ice skating and other large events - will be used to vaccinate up to 9,000 people a week.

Dorset HealthCare said planning to convert the BIC into a vaccine centre started in November and had been "an enormous undertaking".

It was one of 10 new mass vaccination sites to open in England on Monday.

Staff and volunteers will run the centre for 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Frontline workers and people aged 80 and over were the first to receive the jab at the new clinic.

Nursing director Dawn Dawson told the BBC she was proud of how the BIC had been transformed

Dawn Dawson, Dorset HealthCare's director of nursing, therapies and quality, said: "It's been a really tough 10 months for the NHS so to be here today doing something that's going help us get through the pandemic... is absolutely fantastic."

She added that people should not turn up at the BIC before they have received a letter inviting them to be vaccinated.

The government has promised that all over-70s, the extremely clinically vulnerable and frontline health and care workers - about 15 million people - will be offered a jab by mid-February.