Record jags total hit as Sturgeon is quizzed on rollout
THE highest number of coronavirus vaccinations in one day have been given out, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed. She said the vaccination programme was going well because people were taking up the offer of a jag.
Official statistics showed another 38,484 vaccinations had been carried out on Tuesday.
Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament: “That is the highest daily total so far and is 59% up on the same day last week.
“As I said yesterday, the total figure includes 98% of residents in older people’s care homes who have not just been offered the vaccine but have been vaccinated with the first dose.
“In addition, 87% of people aged over 80 living in the community have also now had the first dose.
“That figure is based on our original estimate of the number of over-80s but, as I said yesterday, work that is being done with health boards to refine that estimate suggests that that percentage might now be higher.
“I can report that, as of this morning, 20% of people aged 75 to 79 have also had the first dose.”
Sturgeon had been challenged at First Minister’s Questions by opposition leaders on the speed of the vaccine rollout.
Scottish Conservative Holyrood leader Ruth Davidson said the vaccine rollout is lagging behind the rest of the UK.
She said: “It is in all our interests that the programme works well, so let us focus on what the First Minister is going to do to accelerate it.
“For consecutive weeks, numbers of vaccinations have dropped substantially on Sundays, which is at risk of becoming a consistent pattern.”
Sturgeon replied:
“The
Health
Secretary and the vaccination team have been working to ensure that capacity is fully utilised every day of the week, including Sundays.
“This afternoon, I will meet the chief executives of health boards to hear from them the steps that they have taken to ensure that the overall pace is accelerating in the wider community, and that there is consistent performance seven days a week.
“This programme is going well, because of the willingness of the public to come forward in such huge numbers to be vaccinated.”
Interim Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie said: “Our rollout is much slower than those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“The First Minister says, rightly, that it is not a competition between nations, but it is a race against the virus and we are not going fast enough.”
Sturgeon responded: “I have said before and say again that I welcome the scrutiny, but Opposition parties could occasionally try to hide the fact that they are obviously deeply irritated at the fact that the programme has been accelerating.
“It is perfectly legitimate to mention Sunday, but today we have reported the highest total of vaccinations in the whole programme so far and there is not a lot of mention of that.”
The latest statistics showed there were another 88 deaths registered of someone who tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 28 days.
Another 978 positive cases were reported in the past 24 hours – a positivity rate of 5.1% of all tests.
Sturgeon said there were 1871 people in hospital, down 63, and that there were 128 patients in intensive care, a decrease of 12.
A total of 67 people in Glasgow died between January 24 and January 31 after contracting the virus.
The Glasgow City Council area recorded the highest number of deaths in Scotland during this time, with Lanarkshire following with a further 40 deaths.
It brings the Scottish death toll of those to have passed away from the virus to 8347, according to the National Records of Scotland.
That is the highest daily total so far and is 59% up