12-fold leap in jabs needed to reach goal for over-80s

SCOTLAND must increase its vaccination rate 12-fold to meet the target of immunising all over-80s by February.

The SNP Government came under renewed pressure about the ‘lagging’ scheme yesterday amid concerns hundreds of thousands of doses are not being delivered in time.

Figures from Public Health Scotland show that 35,383 Scots aged over 80 had received their Covid jab by January 17, equating to 13 per cent of the age group.

The majority of the vaccinations took place in care homes but the data includes the first of those called into GP surgeries.

That leaves 234,660 over-80s still to be vaccinated by early February.

The vaccination rate so far has equated to an average of 884 a day.

That must be ramped up to 11,174 a day until February 7.

Launching the over-80s programme on January 7, Nicola Sturgeon said: ‘We’re aiming to have all over-80s receive the first dose of the vaccine over the next four weeks.’

Since then she has come under fire for the slow rollout of the plan compared with in England, where more than a third of that age group have been vaccinated.

On Sunday, Dr Andrew Buist, chairman of the Scottish GP committee of the British Medical Association (BMA), said vaccine supplies had been ‘patchy’, with some GPs yet to receive doses. In total, 309,909 people have received their first vaccine dose. The Scottish Government aims to be delivering 400,000 into Scots’ arms every week when the scheme is in full swing.

Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said: ‘The SNP simply cannot continue to dismiss the widespread concerns about the speed of the vaccination programme across Scotland. It is clear that they are significantly lagging behind in vaccinating those who are over 80, a critical group.’

At Holyrood on Wednesday, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘The vaccination programme is not lagging behind in Scotland.

‘We deliberately focused first on elderly residents in care homes because those are the people most vulnerable to becoming ill with and dying from Covid.’

She added: ‘Right now, 75 per cent of GP practices either have or are in the process of getting supply. That figure will never be 100 per cent because not every GP practice is participating in vaccination.’

With the jabs drive ‘picking up’, she said: ‘We’re working to a target of vaccinating all over-80s by the first week in February.’

Scottish Lib Dem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘We’re certainly going to need to up the pace. Far too many GP surgeries are still short of supply.’

Yesterday, Dr Buist added: ‘The target is ambitious – however it can be done, as long as we have improved reliability in vaccine supply.’