Scottish Government publish plans for deployment of Covid-19 vaccination

By Emma O'Neill, Reporter14th January 2021News ScotlandCoronavirus / Covid-19, News Scotland

The Scottish Government has released plans on how it intends to roll out the Covid-19 vaccination.

The 16-page document explains how it hopes to vaccinate 4.5 million Scots as quickly as possible.

Everyone over the age of 18 will be invited for a vaccination, as well as 16 and 17-year-olds who are frontline health and social care workers, young carers or have underlying health conditions.

In what it has called “the largest mass vaccination programme”, the government plans to vaccinate 400,000 each week from the end of February.

However, the Scottish government has highlighted that these targets will vary week-to-week depending on vaccine supplies, after it published a detailed plan of how many vaccines it expects to receive each week until the end of May – something the UK Government has refused to do so far.

In the week commencing February 15, it expects to only be able to administer 78,731 vaccinations due to supply issues. But for the week beginning March 7, it expects this to rise to 432,207.

By mid-March, the government expects to receive a weekly supply of more than 300,000 coronavirus vaccines.

Vaccinations will take place in care homes, where needed into people’s own homes, through GP surgeries, local vaccination clinics, community pharmacies, mobile vaccination units and mass vaccination centres.

Current proposals for mass vaccination centres, which are capable of vaccinating up to 20,000 people a week, include: NHS Louisa Jordan, Glasgow; Edinburgh International Conference Centre; Pyramids Business Park, Bathgate; Queen Margaret University, Musselburgh; P&J Live at TECA, Aberdeen; Ravenscraig Sports Facility, Motherwell.

People will begin to receive letters from the last 10 days of January, inviting them to attend appointments from February onwards.

Vaccinations will be grouped in priority groups:

Group 1: Residents and workers in care homes for older people (30,000 residents, 45,000 staff); All those over 80 years of age and over (250,000).
Group 2: Patient-facing, frontline healthcare workers; Non-clinical but patient facing staff in secondary or primary care/community healthcare settings; Laboratory and pathology staff; Social care staff directly involved in the care of their service users (230,000).
Group 3: All those 75 years of age and over (190,000).
Group 4: All those 70 years of age and over (280,000); Clinically extremely vulnerable individuals (110,000).
Group 5: All those 65 years of age and over (280,000).
Group 6: All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality and unpaid carers (1,010,000).
Group 7: All those 60 years of age and over (280,000).
Group 8: All those 55 years of age and over (330,000).
Group 9: All those 50 years of age and over (340,000).
Group 10: All remaining (3,375,000)

Those in groups 1-9 are expected to have received at least one vaccination by early May 2021, with a target to have been given their second vaccination by mid-July.