Surge in jab rollout
WALES is on track to vaccinate nearly threequarters of a million people by mid-February after a surge in vaccines delivered in the past four days. In total 8.7% of the Welsh population have now received their first jabs.
WALES is on track to vaccinate nearly three-quarters of a million people by mid-February after a surge in vaccines delivered in the past four days.
Since the ambitious targets were set and the rollout began in earnest last month, Wales initially seemed to be falling ever further behind in a quest to give all 740,350 in the initial priority groups their first jabs.
It led to accusations of a ‘go-slow’ vaccination strategy.
But in just three days between Thursday and Sunday, a tenth of that number were given their jabs and Wales is now on target.
It comes as Health Minister Vaughan Gething admitted that snowfall on Sunday hampered the trend seen in the days before of more than 20,000 people being given a jab every 24 hours.
In total 8.7% of the Welsh population have now received their first jabs.
Wales has now overtaken both Northern Ireland and Scotland in the rate of vaccinations being administered and is closing the gap on England.
While First Minister Mark Drakeford has insisted the vaccines rollout is “not a race” between the home nations, the pressure to get as many people vaccinated as possible in the shortest possible time is immense as the level of Covid infections contine to leave people shut in their homes, children out of school and the economy and jobs in crisis.
The shift in momentum has been welcomed by some of Mr Drakeford’s harshest critics.
Andrew RT Davies said on Saturday that the figures were “very good news”. The new Welsh Conservative leader admitted he’d been “critical when necessary”, particularly in relation to some of the “puzzling messaging” from the Welsh Government, but added: “Credit where credit is due, these are good numbers and heading in the right direction.”
Speaking earlier this week, Mr Gething, said there had been a “sharp acceleration” as supplies of the vaccine had increased.
The vaccination effort in Wales has been given a massive boost by GPs over the past few days. Mr Gething said Wales now has 329 GP practices offering vaccines and this is set to increase again this week.
In addition, the first three community vaccine centres opened in North Wales and Bridgend on the weekend.
Snowy weather over the weekend contributed to much smaller numbers on Sunday – with 6,295 vaccinated compared to 23,991 on Saturday and four vaccination centres were temporarily closed due to “adverse weather conditions”.
But some GPs were not daunted. In North Wales, three medical practices got together to deliver more than 1,000 vaccines over the weekend, despite only being the go-ahead late on Wednesday evening.
Mr Gething acknowledged yesterday that last week he’d committed to the fact that 70% of people over 80 and 70% of those in care homes would have been vaccinated by Monday.
He said the data isn’t yet available to confirm this, but every day this week, the number of people vaccinated had increased.
He could confirm, however, that more than 70% of care home workers have now been vaccinated.
Public Health Wales publishes a daily figure of the data sent to them from vaccination centres and GP surgeries by 10pm the previous day, but there is a lag of a few days in vaccine data being entered into the system, verified and then reported.
Mr Gething added: “We’re doing everything we can to make sure people get the vaccine as quickly as possible.
“Many people worked through the weekend to deliver the vaccine and what your’e doing for your country is incredible.”
The Welsh Government will increase the amount of information published about the vaccination programme in the coming days.
Starting this week, it will publish information about the amount of vaccine received, the amount supplied and the amount of vaccines, which are not suitable for use in Wales on a health board basis.
“This will be updated every week and is in addition to the data which is published every day about the number of first and second doses which are being given,” Mr Gething added.