To our Fantastic Team at The Hive
Today is a historic and momentous day for us all at The Hive as this is our last day of vaccinating. I want to take this opportunity to thank and pay tribute to all of you who have given your all to making our COVID vaccination programme a tremendous success.
In Harrow, we are a community with a very high multi-ethnic population and a community that has been devastated by COVID. Indeed, Harrow was amongst the first areas in the pandemic to have been hit by a COVID surge, with our local hospital Northwick Park declaring a critical incident in March 2020. As GP practices, many of us have lost too many patients to COVID, and the development of the vaccine finally gave us the hope to fight this disease, save lives and bring back some normality to all our lives.
On 15th December, 2020, we were among the first few centres in the whole country to go live with the COVID vaccination programme. We were selected as the site for the media launch of the programme and we were visited on our launch day by the BBC, The Independent, the Press Association and other media outlets. I appeared on the news throughout that day on behalf of our team, and this was a really proud moment for us all.
In January, we were recognised for our highly successful programme at The Hive and were visited by The Prime Minister, who spent a good few hours with us early one snowy Monday morning. He spent time speaking with our teams and our patients and this was aired on TV news channels, in fact all over the world.
Throughout this time, we have continued to deliver more and more vaccines and I am immensely proud to say that we have by today administered a whopping 55000 COVID vaccinations.
My sincere thanks to Alex, Tony and all from The Hive for allowing us to use your fantastic site and for working so flexibly with us.
Ultimately, this has only been possible by the immense and selfless hard work and dedication of our teams of clinicians, admin staff and crucially our volunteers. My sincere thanks to all our clinicians and admin. teams who have both vaccinated patients on site and visited patients at home, as well as the admin teams working round the clock 7 days a week, monitoring our email and contacting patients to book them for first and second doses.
We of course could not have delivered this programme without our incredible team of volunteers, who have selflessly given up their own time and energy, simply to serve and give to the community and to protect our patients. You have all without exception given of yourselves cheerfully and wholeheartedly with absolute sincerity – having braved the most adverse weather conditions – through rain, wind and snow, always committed to the cause and always with a smile on your faces. I am so truly humbled by your dedication and commitment and we all owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
Now as we close the doors at The Hive and bid a farewell to our fantastic team, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you for your valued contribution in supporting us at Harrow East PCN to deliver 55000 COVID vaccinations from The Hive.
You can be proud that each of you has been a part of making history in our fight to overcome this deadly virus in Harrow.
Thank you!
Dr Meena Thakur
Clinical Director
Harrow East PCN
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to volunteer at The Hive. It was a privilege and pleasure.