Admit mistakes and be flexible on Covid

Learning from errors and not letting bureaucracy get in the way of good ideas will help Scotland beat virus

The use of a holiday coach as a mobile vaccination centre in rural Tayside and Perthshire is exactly the sort of flexible approach that should be taken to ensure Scotland’s population is inoculated against Covid as quickly as possible.

Offered free of charge by the firm Lochs and Glens Holidays of Gartocharn, it is a demonstration of the kind of community spirit that has shown itself throughout the pandemic.

The Scottish Ambulance Service and Scottish Government also deserve credit for agreeing to use the vehicle and should be open to other offers of any form of assistance that will speed up the process.

The mass vaccination of the entire population is one of the biggest logistical exercises ever undertaken by a government in peacetime and everyone involved should continue to look for ways to make it go more swiftly and iron out any problems.

One such “little hiccup”, to quote Scotland’s national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch, occurred at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre where staff giving the vaccine were in uproar after they were told to throw away unused doses at the end of their shift, as revealed by The Scotsman.

However, it is perfectly understandable and predictable that, in new and unusual circumstances, there would be glitches in the system or straightforward mistakes.

The key test is whether they are corrected as soon as they become apparent and NHS Lothian has now changed its procedures to reduce the level of wastage which, at 3.7 per cent, has been double the national average.

“That’s exactly the kind of learning you would expect to happen inside any system of this size,” Prof Leitch said. “That conference centre for this purpose only opened four or five days ago, so there will of course be teething challenges.”

Admitting to mistakes, learning from them and being open and honest with the public are all vital to getting the process right and a willingness to do so should inspire confidence.

And being flexible enough to accept help from a possibly unexpected source is also a good sign of the sort of can-do attitude – rather than a bureaucratic one – that Scotland very much needs right now.

“The Conductors pledge themselves for impartiality, firmness and independence... Their first desire is to be honest, the second is to be useful... The great requisites for the task are only good sense, courage and industry”

FROM THE PROSPECTUS OF THE SCOTSMAN, 30 NOVEMBER 1816