Covid: Sunderland patient told booster not possible in hospital

The hospital said the NHS was facing unprecedented pressures

A woman whose husband had a stroke says she was told he could not have his Covid booster jab in the hospital.

Andrea Middlemiss, 53, said Sunderland Royal Hospital staff told her it was difficult to organise and they did not have the facilities.

"If they haven't got the facilities in hospitals, where have they got them?" she said.

The hospital thanked her for raising the issue and said it was now organising a booster.

South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust deputy medical director Dr Paul McAndrew said the hospital aimed to provide boosters "for all our most vulnerable and longer-stay patients".

Inpatients are normally offered a booster if they are well enough to receive it, with decisions made on a case-by-case basis.

Ms Middlemiss said she had emailed the trust on Sunday, but had received no response by Friday, at which point she contacted the BBC.

In her email to the trust she said her husband, Geoff, who is 59, became eligible for his booster three days after being admitted on 19 November. She had been trying to get him vaccinated ever since, she said.

'Slung under her chin'

Ms Middlemiss told the BBC there was now at least one patient on her husband's ward with Covid.

"I just can't believe - for the staff's safety as well as the patients - that they're not giving everybody their boosters," she said.

She had contacted the patient liaison section in November and was told "they'd already had a lot of relatives querying it", she said.

Ms Middlemiss also sent the trust a photograph of smokers outside the hospital entrance and asked how this was "safe or fair", given the trust's smoke-free policy and current ban on visitors.

"As I came back out, a woman in a wheelchair, with a hacking cough, was being returned indoors from smokers corner by her partner," she said.

"She can sit outside with her partner and half a dozen other people, smoking and potentially contracting Covid, then return to her ward with whatever germs she has gathered (her face mask was slung under her chin)."

Dr McAndrew said the trust had asked patients not to smoke outside and, while visiting was restricted, asked families not to come on to trust sites to meet with patients outside.