Lack of vaccine supplies and common decency are starting to needle

Yes, some parts of the county were blanketed by snow and there were tricky driving conditions for the army of brilliant NHS staff and volunteers who help run the centres to negotiate.

But the sites were not closed off due to poor weather conditions, they just did not have sufficient supplies of vaccines.

Of the 10 sites which were closed on Monday, seven took it upon themselves to use their few remaining vaccines to administer jabs to housebound patients.

Local officials are clear that staff and volunteers are doing all they can to carry out as many Covid-19 jabs as possible, but concede that it is supply of vaccines, controlled by NHS England, which has left them high and dry.

NHS England was approached for comment about why local vaccination centres ran out of supplies, but so far they have not come back with an answer.

It was asked why the closed sites did not have sufficient vaccine supplies and if Derbyshire had been actively starved of vaccines due to its progress ahead of other areas, as has happened in the north east and Yorkshire.

Whether or not Derbyshire’s doses of vaccines have been diverted to other areas because of how much better our roll out programme here remains to be seen.

One thing that is clear is that at the moment there are people in Derbyshire who qualfy for vaccines but have struggled to get them.

I know this for a fact because my own mother is one of them.

Supply certainly hasn’t been helped by the gob-smacking fact that some people in Chesterfield have been trying to jump the queue and taking jabs – which were intended for vital key workers and the most elderly in our community – for themselves.

We’ve always prided ourselves on our sense of fair play and patience. The national joke was that if queuing were an Olympic sport, we’d be gold medallists every time, but it seems some people don’t want to wait their turn.

They certainly weren’t at the front of the queue when they were handing out common sense or decency.