THERE was "chaos" at a city GP practice after patients queued for nearly an hour to get their flu and covid jabs.

Long queues snaked around St John's Medical Practice on Saturday morning (October 5) as thousands waited for up to an hour to get their vaccinations. 

It was the busiest-ever Saturday clinic in the GP's history after rumours started circulating online about parking issues at the practice. 

The rumours led to worried patients turning up half an hour before the practice opened.

Patients described scenes of  'parking chaos' and long queues outside while they waited to be seen.

One patient said: "The parking was horrendous.

"They were all up the road. It was absolute chaos.

"The covid jabs were for the elderly but I am not sure if there were people with walkers in the queue. There were quite a lot of 80-year-olds."

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St John's Medical Practice opened at 7.45am and by 1.30pm it had seen 3,000 people.

The practice said it had to see a patient every minute to deal with the morning backlog.

A spokesperson for St John's Medical Practice said: “We want to apologise to patients who feel they had to wait longer than expected during Saturday’s clinic, which was one of our busiest ever seasonal clinics.

"We were unfortunately severely impacted by rumours about this clinic circulating online, which resulted in a high number of patients attending before their booked slot due to concerns they might miss out—resulting in very long queues outside our clinic and difficulties for some patients in finding parking."

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It added that completing so many vaccinations during one season is a positive and they hope this has freed up significant appointment capacity during what is traditionally an extremely busy period for the practice.

To help alleviate the stress caused by the backlog, some administrative department staff walked up and down the queue to offer chocolate to all those waiting.

"As such, we want to thank our staff and Patient Participation Group for putting in a huge amount of extra work over the weekend and before the event to make it happen, and our patients for coming out in such numbers to protect themselves, the St Johns community, and the NHS,” the spokesperson added.