We must not allow the bright hope of vaccines to be dimmed by dither, delay and confusion

EXACTLY a year after the papers first, in news-in-brief columns, reported a strange new illness in China, it is hard to scan the latest coronavirus statistics in anything much short of terror.

Tuesday’s report of 60,916 new cases set a new daily record. in London, 27 per cent of those tested are found positive for Covid-19 – and, last week, 1.1 million people in Britain were sick with it.

On Christmas Day, only 5.3 per cent of Scots tested returned positive. By Monday evening, it was 10.9 per cent. infections continue to soar, at a rate which – if unchecked – will next month see five times as many Scots in need of hospital treatment as there are beds available.

And more than half of all cases are of the new variant of the virus, reckoned to be 70 per cent more transmissible than Covid Classic.

We are in a desperate race against this killer and, indeed, in a race against time, with infections continuing to climb throughout over three months of restrictions and closures decreed by the Scottish Government and with but one chink of light – the arrival of effective vaccines.

But even here there is dither, delay and confusion. My 84-year-old mother was called by her general practice two weeks ago and given a January 19 appointment for the jag. My 80year-old father has heard nothing.

Hundred-year-old war veteran Jack Ransom, as detailed in these pages yesterday, has had no word of his immunisation either. Boris Johnson on tuesday assured England and Wales that, from Monday next, the daily vaccination tally will be daily announced. No such commitment has yet been made by the Scottish Government – though Nicola Sturgeon has ambitiously claimed that 2.5million Scots, broadly everyone over 50, will be inoculated by May.

Advantages

If that is true, the NhS front line needs to get a serious shift on. Sturgeon’s target calls for 19,000 jabs a day: right now, just 3,500 Scots are being immunised daily. Mr Ransom, who survived Japanese capitivity and enslavement on the infamous Death Railway in Burma, cannot understand why he has had no word of his own dose.

‘I have thought about getting in touch with Nicola Sturgeon to ask her,’ he mused on tuesday, ‘but maybe she would be too busy to answer.’

The confusion is all the more infuriating as, in these islands, we boast two advantages: enough supplies of the vaccines, and widespread public willingness to take them.

In France, America and elsewhere, ‘antivaxxer’ delusion is a serious problem; and, thanks to the ineptitude of the European Medicines Agency, more British people have already had the jag than in the whole of the EU.

There are known pinchpoints. the raw materials for both immunisations are in stuttering supply. the ‘fill and finish’ stage is another bottleneck – there is a worldwide shortage of the necessary glass vials – and, even after that, every batch must, under law, be tested for safety.

Scotland, too, has made the decision to put care home residents at the top of the queue; in England, community vaccination has gone ahead first.

And – though he will not admit it – one reason the Prime Minister so swiftly about-turned on keeping English schools open was that the Government would then have come under pressure to prioritise teachers for the jag.

Once that precedent was set, other groups claiming particular vulnerability – bus drivers, supermarket workers and so on – would have clamoured for the shot; old or frail people would have f allen behind i n the queue, and many more people would die.

Also, understandably, bewildered and frightened are the hundreds of thousands of old folk who have already had their first shot and have been contacted with the news their appointments for the booster dose have been cancelled.

As so often in this nightmare, the failure has been one of communication, not policy. Governments both sides of the tweed are desperate to get as many people immunised as possible before actual Covid does it for them – killing one person in 100 in the process – and it makes sense to give as many as possible the first jab before the boosters, which are actually more effective if delayed to twelve weeks after the first.

But it is easier to acknowledge that than to feel it, especially if you are well into your 80s and have been in distanced, isolated misery since last March – unable to hug friends or offspring, stroll the park, dandle a grandson or as much as lay eyes on your first great-grandchild. And, while the latest lockdown has been less traumatic for most Scots than most in England – given the widespread curtailment of our liberties since September – it was hard not to sag at the news on Monday.

Fatigue

How many false dawns have we been promised? Back to normality in a matter of weeks; back to normality by last July; back to normality by Christmas… bit by bit, getting there, rounding the turn, one more heave… i certainly am sick of it – tired of tugging masks on and off, tired of padding round the supermarket in fogged-up glasses, tired of being unable to acknowledge courtesies with a smile, sick of being unable to travel anywhere and exhausted with the daily terror of bringing the virus back to my house and infecting my elderly parents.

And fatigue is now widespread and dangerous. Folk are growing ever more careless about social distancing.

This week, many eschew supermarkets for supposedly safer corner shops – notably not as much the old and doddery as younger people, often with trailing children. A particular bugbear is the queue that frequently forms outside our local Waitrose. it straggles down the side of the building, inside a low wall, and can be joined in perfect safety if people walk down Falcon Avenue and skip in to the end.

Yet invariably there are a dozen morons who barge down, brushing shoulders, breathing on me and many others, eyes determinedly averted from the MacLeod death stare.

We have little hope of effective vaccine direction from health Secretary Jeane Freeman, a figure these days of subterranean profile and whose political career has been such a success she is standing down as an MSP in May after just one term.

But the SNP administration must get a grip. it should seize on all offers of help f or premises. it should enrol all our local pharmacies, which have been dispensing the flu vaccine for years without fuss and without a trail of dead bodies. it should encourage the anxious to wait outside, at close of play, those centres where the Pfizer vaccine is being used – for, given the inevitable no-shows, there is always some left over, and it cannot be kept overnight.

Above all, it must communicate success. Daily the First Minister, in funereal tones, announces the latest grim digits in infections and deaths.

Daily announcement of vaccination accomplishment would reassure and cheer – and leave nowhere for Nationalist incompetence to hide.