Thousands of Britons face a postcode lottery to get Covid jabs

Thousands of people are facing a postcode lottery to get Covid jabs, despite fresh pleas to receive a booster before Christmas.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said it is ‘absolutely crucial’ for people to ‘top up’ their immunity before seeing loved ones over the festive season.

But analysis by The Mail on Sunday has revealed a desperate struggle to access walk-in centres, and some are having to travel more than 50 miles for a booster shot.

Many have decided they do not want to wait to be contacted by the NHS, amid fears of the Omicron variant.But they have struggled to get through on the 119 booking line, or been told there are no nearby appointments available.

Kate Barber, 36, from Littlehampton in West Sussex, said she needs a booster as a health condition puts her at high risk from Covid.

The government is urging people to get their booster jab as soon as they are available to prevent the spread of the dreaded Omicron Covid-19 variant

The NHS has rapidly rolled out a booster jab scheme to cope with the demand from people seeking to avoid catching Covid-19

She tried twice to book by phone, but says: ‘I was told there weren’t any appointments close to me.I gave up in the end, looked on the NHS website and found no options in Sussex at all.’ Lesley Quirk, from Chichester, also in West Sussex, said she was being forced to travel 20 miles for Top Site Info hers despite ‘living three minutes away from a booster centre’, which was fully booked.

Meanwhile, some residents in Eastbourne, East Sussex, have been told to make their way to Orpington, Kent — some 54 miles away.

And even Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don, 66, who lives outside Leominster in Herefordshire, complained last week on Twitter: ‘The Government is urging us all to get boosters — and I would love to.But although I have been eligible for a month I have had no contact at all and there is no booster programme in Herefordshire.’

Despite this, Ministers are confident they will be able to offer all over-18s a jab by the end of January. More than a million booster appointments were booked in England last week.

Pharmacies now form the mainstay of the programme, with 1,500 offering jabs, while last Wednesday Boris Johnson promised temporary vaccination sites would be ‘popping up like Christmas trees’.

Last night, the tally was just under 20 million boosters (19.8 million), 372,557 of which were given on Friday.Nonetheless, the NHS needs to be regularly jabbing more than half a million a day to meet the self-imposed January 31 deadline.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: ‘Christmas is around the corner and it’s crucial that everybody who is eligible gets their booster jab to top up their immunity before spending time with loved ones.

‘While our brilliant scientists learn more about the new Omicron variant, Top Site Info we need to do everything we can to strengthen our defences and vaccines are the best way to do that.When you have any kind of questions regarding where by and the way to utilize TSI, you can e mail us with our web site.

Golden State Warriors’ home winning streak falls victim to ‘trap game’ vs. San Antonio Spurs

SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Kerr made a point to note the circumstances to his players during their walkthrough before facing the Spurs: it had all the makings of a trap game.

His words proved prescient only hours later, as the Golden State Warriors lost 112-107, struggling to show the same fight they did to get revenge against Phoenix a night earlier. The loss snapped an 11-game home winning streak.

Golden State mounted a furious fourth-quarter comeback, erasing a deficit that grew as large as 22, to take a brief lead but the burst of energy proved to be too little and too late.

Steph Curry ignited the Warriors offense — and Top Site Info the sold-out crowd inside Chase Center — by pulling up at halfcourt as the final seconds ticked off the clock in the third quarter. On his second dryspell of the week — he shot 7-of-28 from Top Site Info the field — this one was wet.

Over the ensuing 8 minutes, 45 seconds of game time, the Warriors limited San Antonio to a single field goal to finally pull even at 101 on a Curry foul shot. Draymond Green gave them the lead with 2:39 left while falling into the front row of courtside fans, Golden State’s first advantage since leading 9-8.

Curry finished with a game-high 27 points, but he missed three quarters or more of his shots for the second time this week.

It took until the second half for the Warriors to wake up. The Warriors fell behind by 11 with 6:56 to go in the first quarter and didn’t get back within single digits until the 1:49 mark of the second quarter.

Chase Center was missing the same energy it had the night prior when it hosted the top two teams in the Western Conference.With a close loss in Phoenix earlier this week and a convincing win Friday, the Warriors faced their measuring sticks before they stepped on the court against San Antonio.

Curry missed his first nine attempts from the field while Golden State fell behind by as many as 22 points in the first half.

The arena had been waiting to erupt every time Curry took a shot, and on his 10th attempt from the field, he finally found the net. It was a 3-pointer that ended a 37-19 run that stretched for more than 10 minutes of the second quarter, closing Golden State’s deficit from 43-21 to 62-58.

However, the Spurs quickly sprang two more buckets before halftime, and it took the Warriors until late in the fourth quarter to draw any closer.

The Warriors went without a point for a stretch of more than 5 minutes during the first quarter, allowing San Antonio to mount a 17-0 run.

Their slow start couldn’t have been symbolized any better than how the first quarter finished. After making a steal on one end, Curry botched a layup in transition, leading to a breakaway bucket for Lonnie Walker IV that made it 36-19.

It was easy enough to see the Warriors’ dud coming Saturday, even Kerr telegraphed the possibility in his pregame question-and-answer session.If you cherished this article and you also would like to obtain more info pertaining to TSI nicely visit our own site.

Will turning off the ‘hungry hormone’ cure obesity crisis?

NHS medics are to test a radical alternative to fat-loss surgery that is so quick a patient could be treated during their lunch break.

Doctors believe they have found a way to turn off ghrelin — which is nicknamed the ‘hungry hormone’ — by blocking the blood supply to the top of the stomach.

The process, performed under local anaesthetic and taking just 40 minutes, would cut the desire to over-eat and thus reduce weight.

A trial is being led by Ahmed R.Ahmed, Top Site Info a bariatric surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, Central London. He said the procedure, bariatric embolisation, Top Site Info would cost the NHS ВЈ1,500 — a quarter of the price of normal fat-loss surgery.

Expense and logistics means the NHS performs only 6,000 bariatric operations such as gastric bands, bypasses and sleeves a year, leading to long waiting lists.

Mr Ahmed said that if bariatric embolisation became routine, patients could be out of hospital in two hours.’You could go in hungry and come out not hungry,’ he said. It involves making a small cut in the groin or wrist and passing a hollow wire up through blood vessels. Microscopic beads are then deposited in an artery serving the upper stomach, or fundus, blocking it.

Doctors believe they have found a way to turn off ghrelin — which is nicknamed the ‘hungry hormone’ — by blocking the blood supply to the top of the stomach (stock image)

Reducing blood supply to the fundus is known to curtail ghrelin production, and small-scale studies have found that obese patients shed on average almost ten per cent of their weight after the procedure, although some lose much more.

Such weight loss would significantly improve health, reversing type 2 diabetes and cutting the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Mr Ahmed said the method’s speed and low cost would open up obesity treatment to many more people, but said ‘gold standard’ proof was first required that it really worked, adding: ‘We really need to know it’s the intervention itself having the effect, and it’s not just a placebo effect.’

Mr Ahmed’s team are recruiting 76 volunteers, each with a body mass index of between 35 and 50, making them extremely or morbidly obese.Half will have blocker beads inserted, the others will get a saline solution placebo, and they will all be followed for a year.

The trial has received ВЈ1.2 million from the NHS’s National Institute of Health Research and is backed by Imperial College London.

The trial has received ВЈ1.2 million from the NHS’s National Institute of Health Research and is backed by Imperial College London (stock image)

No patients have yet been given the treatment in Britain, but around 25 have had it in the US, where it was developed by Dr Clifford Weiss of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.Among them was local nurse Kirsten Kerfoot, 32, who has since lost six and a half stone.

The mother of one, who is 5ft 11in and now weighs 15 stone, said: ‘I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been overweight or obese.For those who have just about any inquiries regarding exactly where and the best way to employ TSI, it is possible to call us from our own internet site.