A leading Derbyshire doctor suspects that the most vulnerable residents may get Covid-19 booster jabs every six months and most of society will get vaccines once a year.

Dr Steve Lloyd, medical director for the Derby and Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group, said the use of repeated boosters was not optimal or sustainable.

During a CCG meeting on Wednesday, February 3, Dr Lloyd said it was his personal opinion that boosters would be required for the most critically vulnerable patients after six months.

He said it was "completely impractical" to rely on health services to roll out the rapid-fire vaccination service on a regular basis, alongside their existing responsibilities.

Dr Lloyd said a new system, run in parallel, needed to be set up with its own staff to roll out vaccines on the level of the current "emergency footing".

He said: "My gut feel at this moment would suggest antibody level for most vulnerable, as defined by jcvi would reach that critical level at around about six months, but like I say, repeated boosters on a short-term basis is not the optimum way to use boosters or vaccinations, but needs must.

"I am quite clear in my mind that we need to turn the key now from emergency response to a service line, but it is absolutely critical that that service line is separated from the usual activity undertaken by all our pillars, community pharmacies, GPs, hospitals.

"We cannot keep drawing down from our system in the way we have through emergency response.

"It is necessary but absolutely not sustainable."

Dr Lloyd said the UK must not "feel we are sitting pretty" and ignore areas of the world where most people remain unvaccinated due to a sheer lack of vaccines, as opposed to the demand for jabs.

He said large unvaccinated populations, including in Namibia and sub-Saharan Africa, are "literally breeding grounds for variants".

Dr Lloyd said: "More variants may come along and we may need to visit this emergency response again.

"There will undoubtedly be more variants and some may be more transmissible. It is not just about us, we will be revisiting this again."

Dr Emma Pizzey, a GP at Littlewick Medical Centre in Ilkeston, said the vaccine rollout had "sucked an awful lot of clinical time" and it was "something that we can continue to sustain long-term".

She said: "I know there has been a move towards community pharmacy sites, but this is still using pharmacists on the whole to deliver the vaccines.

"Do we have plans to train up a whole new cohort of people to deliver these vaccines so that we are not using our existing staff in health and social care, which we already quite short of?

"I think we realise this is going to be a repetitive and ongoing programme so I think we need to look at the longevity of it."

Dr Avi Bhatia, chairman of the CCG, said he was concerned about how a vaccination service would need to be parallel to existing services and was worried about how it would be staffed.

He said: "GPs and hospital consultants have got other things that they could be doing."

Meanwhile, Dr Chris Clayton, chief executive of the CCG said there were care gaps and health gaps growing which would be "quite significant" and impact health inequality, but that this was difficult to quantify at the moment.

He said an "urgent stocktake" was being carried out.

Dr Buk Dhadda, a Swadlincote GP, said the significant waiting list which has grown as a result of the pandemic was continually being assessed to make sure those most at risk were being prioritised.

Dr Robyn Dewis, public health director at Derby City Council, said there was a "really significant impact coming" from the build-up of people either choosing not to access health services or patients unable to access care.

She said some patients feared accessing services due to the risk of Covid-19 and that people who would typically have been called in for routine checkups had appointments cancelled or postponed.

Dr Dewis said there were also lifestyle changes which people have adopted through the pandemic which would have a wave of knock-on health impacts – tied to diet changes, physical activity, "and particularly alcohol intake".

She also said there were national reports of child immunisations dropping off significantly.

Dr Dewis said all of this would affect communities differently but that "the most disadvantaged communities will be the most impacted".