Working round the clock for a year now fighting this brutal pandemic

We should take a moment to recognise that while dealing with a full blown health emergency – with hundreds of patients being admitted to our hospitals every day – the NHS is also having to plan vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of local residents.

Doctors, nurses, and other health and social service staff have been working round the clock for a year now fighting this brutal pandemic.

Sometimes we need to just thank them for their efforts on our behalf – and certainly members of the committee did so at the meeting.

The vaccination programme is being accelerated with the opening of "mass vaccination centres" in all our local boroughs – the first one in Brent having been launched on January 18.

By the end of January, the NHS plans to have given the first dose of the vaccine to every care home resident in North West London.

By mid-February, they plan to have done this for everyone aged over 75, all those over 70 who are clinically extremely vulnerable and all frontline health and care workers.

They will then work through the rest of our population, in line with priorities that are set at national level.

While some of us feel the priorities could be different – the committee raised questions as to why teachers were not included, for example – we need to recognise that these are government guidelines. Those in our local health services just need to get on and organise the programme.

The key points for local residents are simple ones. The NHS – either your GP or a mass vaccination centre – will contact you when it is your turn to be vaccinated.

If you do not want to travel to a vaccination centre, you can wait for your GP to get in touch. Above all, continue to follow the public health guidance – even when you are vaccinated, you can still spread the virus.

Let’s look after ourselves and each other and stay safe.