COVID-19 Vaccination Drive-Through Facility Opens Up at QMU
On a snowy day on 10 February 2021, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, a large area of the QMU car park opened up as a COVID-19 vaccination drive-through facility. Run by NHS Lothian, the vaccination centre was capable of vaccinating more than 5,000 people per week at 12 stations.
The facility at QMU played a vital role in the delivery of vaccinations to people living in Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian, with mass vaccination ultimately enabling COVID restrictions to come to an end.
University staff were pleased and proud that we could assist in Scotland’s recovery from COVID-19 by supporting the biggest mass vaccination programme our country had ever undertaken.
Providing the land for the NHS vaccination facility was just one of many ways in which QMU supported the response to the pandemic. Our academics had been quick to act from the start of the pandemic, by drawing on their expertise. For example, staff were involved in identifying what services people needed when they were recovering from the virus in isolation. Another of our multidisciplinary teams explored the impact of restrictions during the pandemic on loneliness and isolation within Scotland’s refugee and asylum seekers’ community.
In addition, we equipped our healthcare students to move quickly from university directly into professional roles within our NHS to support our healthcare service at a time of national and international crisis. Beyond that, our students, graduates and staff teams worked tirelessly to lead and support all manner of community initiatives such the Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts social enterprise, led by one of our students, which prepared thousands of healthy free meals for people in need during the pandemic.
