SIXTH OF OVER-80S NOT HAD BOOSTER
‘Deep concern’ for one of top priority groups
SCOTLAND’S booster rollout is to be ramped up in the run-up to Christmas amid fears more vaccine targets are set to be missed.
Latest figures show 16.4 per cent of people aged 80-plus have not received the booster, despite being one of the top priority groups who were supposed to receive it first.
One in three frontline health workers and some 17.5 per cent of care home residents have also not yet had the booster.
It has led to fears SNP ministers will fail to achieve a pledge to ensure that everyone in the top four priority groups – including over-70s, care home residents and frontline healthcare workers – will be offered appointments by the end of this month, with all other priority groups, including 50 to 69-year-olds, to have them ‘by early next year’.
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf yesterday promised to accelerate the rollout and ensure that more than half a million people a week are receiving vaccines in the runup to Christmas.
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: ‘It is deeply concerning that almost 17 per cent of over-80s have still not had their booster jag.
‘We are hearing examples of patients being offered appointments far away from home, or having to queue for hours in the wind and rain. This is even more harmful and impractical for the elderly, who are the most at risk from Covid and the least able to attend distant or inconvenient vaccination appointments.’
He also called for mass vaccination centres to be reopened to ensure the most vulnerable people can get the booster, adding: ‘The SNP must urgently do more to facilitate the rollout of booster vaccinations – or risk elderly and vulnerable patients falling through the cracks.’
Official Public Health Scotland figures show 83.6 per cent of those over the age of 80 have had the booster, compared with 100 per cent who have been double-jabbed.
This compares with 91.5 per cent of 75 to 79-year-olds who have had the booster, and 88.3 per cent of 70 to 74-year-olds. Among care home residents, 82.5 per cent have had the booster, and only 66.4 per cent of frontline health workers.
Nearly one in four (23.4 per cent) of those who are so vulnerable they were advised to shield have also still not had the booster.
The Scottish Government yesterday announced that just over 1.5million boosters have now been delivered, which is 33.8 per cent of all people over the age of 18.
It also said that an average of 30,000 people a day have been receiving a vaccine dose since early this month.
Mr Yousaf told BBC Good Morning Scotland he wanted this to be accelerated. He said: ‘We are doing about 500,000 a week. I want us to go even faster. I would like us to increase because of course we had a backlog because when the [boosters] advice from the JCVI [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] came, a number of people, hundreds of thousands in fact, were already eligible.’
He said discussions were taking place with health boards about how to maximise capacity, and said he wanted ‘to vaccinate as many people as possible’ in the run-up to Christmas.
People become eligible for a booster 24 weeks after they received the second dose.
Asked how to get back to the higher daily capacity earlier in the vaccine rollout, Mr Yousaf said he was instructing boards to ‘maximise the vaccinator workforce’.
Mr Yousaf also said he is ‘keen’ to see the JCVI review whether to give the vaccine to those under the age of 12 – but insisted he will be ‘led by the experts’.
‘Queue for hours in the rain’
‘I want us to go even faster’