First Minister defends vaccine rollout

Nicola Sturgeon has again defended the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in Scotland as opposition leaders expressed concerns about the pace of the programme.

The First Minister insisted Scotland remained “on track” to meet its target for vaccinating people on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) priority lists.

She confirmed at First Minister’s Questions that over 60 per cent of over 80s living in the community had received the first dose, while the vaccination of elderly care home residents was “virtually completed”.

The aim is to have given all over 80s the first dose by the end of next week. Sturgeon said the “vast majority” will have received it at the start of the week.

But Scottish Conservative Holyrood leader Ruth Davidson said there were still problems with delivering sufficient supplies of the vaccines to GPs, pointing to the case of one clinically vulnerable man who was having to wait for his GP to get supplies, while his wife had been invited to get her dose at a mass vaccination centre.

She said: “The Scottish Government can call up deliveries overnight from the distribution centres but are only sending out weekly deliveries to GPs.

“The head of GPs at BMA Scotland has asked if family doctors can be allowed to order stocks directly in order to help speed up this process. Will the First Minister let them?”

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said 140,000 more people in Scotland would have been vaccinated by now had it kept pace with England.

He said: “Every day a vaccine is left in a vial is another day that a person is left exposed to the threat of this deadly virus. With 100,000 lives lost, we can’t afford slippages like this anymore.”

Sturgeon said discussions were continuing with those on the frontline about streamlining the programme and how to continue building the pace of delivery.

She said: “We are putting in place a programme that is working through the cohorts as clinically recommended, doing so appropriately and sustainably, and we’ll continue to do that.”

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour interim leader Jackie Baillie criticised the test, trace and isolate system. She said testing capacity was being under-utilised and people were not receiving enough support to help them self-isolate.

The First Minister insisted the system was “working well” and confirmed more asymptomatic testing programmes were being put in place to make use of spare testing capacity.