Vax to the max round the clock
STAFF will work round the clock to help with mass vaccinations, Scotland’s Health Secretary has said.
Jeane Freeman said vaccinators will help immunise the population during evenings and weekends.
It came as Scotland, which is already in level 4 lockdown, recorded the highest number of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.
About 100,000 people in Scotland have received a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was backed by regulators recently.
The separate OxfordAstraZeneca product has also been approved and is considered to be the game changer.
Scotland will receive 44,000 doses of this vaccine next week.
The priority groups include people administering the jabs, as well as residents in care homes and frontline health workers.
Freeman confirmed everyone over 50 could receive the vaccine by the spring.
She said: “It can’t be a guarantee because it depends on supplies but what I do know is that our planning is ready.
“As long as the supplies of both vaccines continue to come through to us then we are ready to deliver the vaccine to all of those in that Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation priority list – so that’s everyone over 50 – in the spring. That is very positive and good news because that is a group of people that [the] committee of experts have identified as those who are most at risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19.”
She confirmed Scotland has 2300 registered vaccinators to help with the rollout.
She added: “The next group of people, and the group that AstraZeneca vaccine really opens the door for us to be able to vaccinate easily, are those who are over 80 and live in their own homes – they live in the community, not in care homes.
“We’ll be doing that through GP practices, pharmacies and local vaccination centres.”
On staffing, she said: “We want to be able to vaccinate not just during the day [but also] over weekends and into the evenings.”
The daily Covid figures showed that 2622 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours, which comes after 2045 cases were reported on Wednesday and 1895 on Tuesday.
Another 68 fatalities were reported, bringing the death toll under this measure to 4578.
Seven deaths were recorded over December 25-29, with a further 43 deaths on Wednesday.
There are 1174 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, with 70 in intensive care.