Mass vaccination centre at EICC to close

The mass vaccination centre at the EICC on Morrison Street will close later this month.

The centre will have delivered more than 250,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine by 19 September when the EICC will restore its space for conferences and other events. This number is made up of 131,897 first doses and 122,747 second doses among people from all over the NHS Lothian area.

The vaccination programme will now become more community based and extra local clinics will be put in place of the larger vaccination centre which was set up at the beginning of the vaccination programme in December 2020.

The Health and Social Care Partnership in Lothian will use the Lowland Hall at the Royal Highland Centre as a large centre along with smaller community based centres.

Patients will be given appointments at local clinics or drop in centres.

Pat Wynne, Nurse Director Primary and Community Care, NHS Lothian, said: “Our teams have achieved a massive amount in such a short space of time and we are really grateful to them for making such tremendous efforts.

“They have helped provide protection to over quarter of a million people from across Lothian in just one centre alone – that is quite an achievement.

“We would also like to thank the EICC and we are really grateful to their teams for helping to make this programme possible. 

“As we move into this new phase, we know that the vaccination programme will continue to help save the lives of more of adults and young people across Lothian and I would urge anyone who has not yet completed their course to do so as soon as possible.”

Marshall Dallas, EICC CEO, said: “We have been proud to work alongside NHS Lothian by facilitating Edinburgh’s main vaccination centre, where we have welcomed many thousands of people in our community every day to be vaccinated – without doubt this is the most important event we will ever host.”

Since the vaccination programme began, a total of 1,261,558 doses of the lifesaving vaccine has been delivered overall in Lothian, with a total of 673,447 individuals.

Teams have been working to administer the vaccine in mass vaccination centres, drive-through centres, community-based centres, on a bus, from a vaxi-taxi, in pop-up clinics, in shopping centres, in football stadiums and at Musselburgh Racecourse.

A spokesperson for the Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership said: “We are entering a new phase of the vaccination programme which will allow us to create more convenient, community-based clinics. We will continue to Lowland Hall as the main vaccination centre in Edinburgh, but we will support that with 11 other centres spread across the city to make it as easy as possible for people to attend.”