ARE WE FINALLY
Death rate falls ++ Vaccine kicks in ++ Now just 1 in 10 fatalities is in care homes
A DROP in weekly deaths and a sharp fall in those in care homes are ‘evidence’ vaccinations are working, the Health Secretary revealed yesterday.
Jeane Freeman said deaths in care homes continue to ‘decline significantly’ and account for only 11 per cent of the total.
Around half of all deaths in Scotland were in care homes at the height of the first wave of the pandemic last year.
It comes as the country’s death toll passed 9,500, according to National Records of Scotland (NRS). Its statistics cover all deaths registered with Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate.
A total of 227 deaths were registered between February 22 and 28 – down 64 on the previous week. Of these, 187 were people in hospital and 26 in care homes.
A total of 1,661,879 people have received a first dose of a vaccine as of yesterday morning, with 92,550 having a second dose. Nearly half of all care home residents have now received a second dose.
According to the NRS, care home deaths went from 111 in the week beginning January 18 to 26 for the week beginning February 22.
Miss Freeman said: ‘Deaths in care homes continue to decline significantly. This does provide further evidence that vaccination may be reducing the number of people dying from Covid.’
Dr Gregor Smith, the chief medical officer, warned it was ‘really important’ that, alongside vaccinations, we continue to try to suppress the virus ‘to make sure we allow seldom opportunity for the virus to further evolve’.
He said: ‘What we don’t have yet is a full assessment as to how long vaccination will confer immunity.
‘Once we know that, we’ll know exactly when booster doses may or may not be required.’
New and more transmissible variants of the virus are feared to be less susceptible to vaccines.
Dr Smith said: ‘Some of those [variants] have features that may mean it’s more likely that the virus can begin to show what we call immune escape, either away from natural immunity, or from the vaccine immunity that we give from the vaccination programme.’
He added: ‘It’s reasonable to suspect there will be an ongoing need for some sort of vaccination programme. But what we don’t know at this stage with confidence is what would be the interval between receiving your primary course and a subsequent booster.
‘That’s very much dependent on how quickly other variants become apparent and established.
Miss Freeman said it was not yet clear who would need to be given another course of the vaccine, but planning was ‘under way’ for this.
Factors being taken into consideration include staff numbers and where jabs would be offered.
Miss Freeman said: ‘Planning is under way to indicate the scenarios... reasonable expectation of a repeat of the current scale of the vaccination programme – 4.45million adults in Scotland – at one end, to the possibility it may be a small number at the other end.
‘It depends on all that evidence, information and knowledge that’ll come through people like Gregor.’