A COVID vaccination centre set up at the University of the West of England’s Frenchay campus has closed, after giving more than 270,000 jabs.
It brings to an end a three-year occupation of UWE’s Exhibition and Conference Centre, which started when the building was converted into an NHS Nightingale Hospital early in the pandemic.
It took just 24 days and cost £14.2 million to open the hospital in April 2020, but it was never used to treat Covid cases.
After being ‘stood down’ a year later it was taken over by the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Vaccination Programme, and opened as a vaccine centre that July.
At its peak in December 2021 more than 4,000 people a day were being given AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna jabs at the centre, which was open seven days a week for appointments and walk-in clinics.
The 273,000 Covid vaccinations administered at the centre represented more than one in every ten of the 2.6 million given across the region, and it also offered flu and monkeypox jabs.
Future vaccinations will all be administered at community vaccination clinics, GP surgeries and pharmacies
The UWE centre’s final vaccination clinic was held on March 17.
BNSSG Covid-19 Vaccination Programme chief nurse Anne Morris said the closure was a “positive milestone”.
She said: “The closure of the Vaccination Centre @ UWE Bristol is only possible because of the hard work of numerous health and care colleagues across our system, as well as the overwhelming response from people in our area who have come forward for their covid vaccinations when invited.”
UWE Bristol vice-chancellor Professor Steve West said: “It is a source of great pride for our staff and students that our university hosted the region’s largest vaccination centre.”
For details of local vaccination sites visit www.grabajab.net.