Stretched GPs offering fewer routine appointments as booster dose roll out is ramped up

Every adult in the UK who has already received two jabs will be able to book a third from Wednesday, amid growing concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant.

Health secretary Sajid Javid has said the Government will “throw everything at” the booster programme and GPs will only be focusing on urgent needs and vaccinations for the next few weeks.

GPs say they will step up to administer millions of extra doses, but urged people who want appointments for other medical conditions to be patient.

Dr Richard Vautrey, a GP working in Leeds, said: “We think it’s the right thing to be doing, because it's going to protect people as quickly as possible from what remains a deadly virus.

“But it will mean that we have fewer appointments available and fewer hours left to do other, more routine care.

“It’s imperative that people understand that some things may be important, but not necessarily prioritised at this critical time. There's a need to be patient - we will get to them whenever it's possible to do so.”

He added: "There's only a certain number of hours in the day and a certain number of people available to to work.

“GP practices are already working under incredible pressure at the moment and are receiving unprecedented levels of requests for consultations from patients.”

Dr Matt Curtis, who works in Keighley, said: “The difficulty is that we're already really operating at the maximum of our workforce capacity. We can do more vaccinations, but to do so will then take away from other things that we're doing.

“We're not quite sure the safest and most acceptable way of doing that.

"Somebody like Boris Johnson can quite easily say some routine appointments will have to be cancelled or postponed, but life isn't as straightforward as that. Often, you don't know if something is urgent or not until you've spent some time talking to the patient about their problems."

It comes after the British Medical Association warned that GP surgeries across the country are “experiencing significant and growing strain” as they struggle to meet rising demand and recruit and retain staff.

The BMA said GPs provided 33.9m appointments in October - 10 per cent more than they did before Covid-19 in October 2019 - and 3.5m of those appointments were for Covid vaccines.

The NHS has also seen 1,139 GPs leave the profession since October 2020, it added.

Dr Farah Jameel, chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, said: “We will do our very best to continue looking after and prioritising our sickest.

“When supported by Government, we will find a way to rise to the challenge set and create capacity to vaccinate the country in this race against Omicron.”

In England a booster is available to everyone aged 18 or over from this week as long as the second dose was at least three months ago.

Over-30s can already book a booster online and, from Wednesday, this will be extended to over-18s.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said all adults would be able to get a booster dose by December 31, but NHS England then said everyone will be offered the chance to book a booster by that date.

Mr Johnson added: “We now want to hit warp speed and we’ll have to attain a pace and a number of daily booster doses that will exceed anything that we’ve done before.

“But I’ve got no doubt at all that we have the people, we have the enthusiasm, we have the fundamental optimism about what we can do, which we’ve learned from the experience of the last 18 months. And I know that people are going to rise to this.”

Government figures show 89.2 per cent of people over the age of 12 in the UK have already received two doses of a vaccine and 41 per cent have had three.