Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Collecting more data ‘would slow things down’
COLLECTING more data on how vaccines are being distributed would slow the roll-out down, according to Scotland’s clinical director.
Professor Jason Leitch claimed the “burden of data collection” could stop a nurse meant to administer an inoculation from doing so, if they had to take details on who they were administering it to, how old they were, what priority group they were in and other information.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) asked those responsible for data collection for further detail, including information on sex, age and ethnicity of the person being vaccinated, and what priority group they were in.
The Scottish Government does produce vaccine data on age range and sex.
Ed Humpherson, director general for regulation at the OSR, said providing further statistics would benefit the clampdown on the virus in the long-run.
Professor Leitch said: “We got the information from the statistics regulator, like the other four countries did.
They have the aspiration for very detailed analysis of the vaccine data, but burden of data collection is a real thing.
“It takes longer to vaccinate if you have to collect more data, it is as straightforward as that . . . We will look to have as much data as we can without slowing down the vaccination programme.