Health practitioners are having to get creative in order to deliver the flu-jab this year.

With traditional drop-in clinics not possible due to social distancing, centres are using different ways to get the point across.

Carlisle Healthcare is planning to carry out a flu-jab ‘drive thru’ at Carlisle Airport and a pharmacy in West Cumbria has utilised a hotel in order to administer the vaccine.

Nat Mitchell, pharmacist from Allisons Chemist in Cockermouth, had the idea to carry out a walk-in flu-jab service from The Globe's premises in Main Street.

He said: "I do the flu service myself every year and when the pandemic happened I realised quite quickly that we couldn't run the service we run, how busy it is with social distancing measures in place. I happen to know the landlord here and I asked him if we could use it and he was very helpful and said we could and we have set it up in a way that helps to keep people distanced and get their jabs safely."

Gwen Graham, 80, from Brigham said she hasn't had a flu-jab for 20 years, but: "thought I'd better have one with all the Covid." She recommended that people come and get their flu-jabs at The Globe and added that she has never seen anything like the current situation in her lifetime.

Alex Evans had travelled from Wigton to come for his flu-jab, after being unsuccessful in getting innoculated in his home town.

He said: "I've come from Wigton. I have tried my local GP, chemist, and couldn't get in anywhere. A friend of a friend told me about it being done here. I prefer it, you can just walk in. I thought it was a good idea to have the jab with coronavirus."

Nat said he has administered more than 3000 flu-jabs in three weeks and is happy with how it's gone. Around 10 per cent of the jabs have been to tourists that are holidaying here.

He said: "We've had a lot of people coming on their staycations and they've had messages from their surgeries at home saying they can't have jabs, so we've had people from London and the south as you can get them in a pharmacy no matter where you're registered."

He urged people to go for their jab and said: "The flu-jab is very important and I think people have to work harder to get it this year because not everywhere has got it so don't give up if you don't get it at the first attempt, there will be other vaccines coming out on different sites at different times a lot of pharmacies haven't had their vaccines yet.

"We've had people coming from as far as Whitehaven to get their jabs. It's really important and take it seriously because not having had flu in the past isn't a reason why you won't get it now."

Nat said Allisons will continue to hold the walk-in service and will consider it for the future. He said: "Definitely as long as this pandemic is here and we haven't got a vaccine and social distancing is a thing, we have to take that into account with any service that we provide and try and make sure we do that as safely as possible."