Scotland’s First Minister says she is more confident than ever that people of all ages will agree to be vaccinated against Covid-19 after the uptake in the first cohorts went beyond anything that she believed was possible.

A total of 98% of older residents in care homes, 89% of staff working in older people’s care homes and more than 90% of people aged over 80 living in the community have now been vaccinated.

“Let me be clear,” Nicola Sturgeon told the governments daily briefing, “these are not figures for people offer the vaccination, these are people who have actually been vaccinated.

“These are quite extraordinary uptake numbers, and they are hugely important given the toll the virus has taken on older people in care homes.”

By contrast, 79% of people aged 65 years and over opted to accept flu vaccination in the weeks up until 20^th of December 2020 – surpassing the 74% of over-65s vaccinated against flu in the whole 2019-20 season – before the decision was taken to halt the rollout of flu vaccination to people in their 50s.

Ministers have been criticised in recent days for allowing the pace of vaccination in Scotland to fall behind other UK nations, with a marked reduction in people receiving their first dose of one of the vaccines last Sunday.

The government says the logistics of its decision to concentrate first on people in older adult care homes meant that that phase was always going to be slower than reaching other groups who could be invited to mass vaccination centres.

The First Minister says that 55% more people were vaccinated this week than last, with the number reached yesterday being the highest yet.

However, she said that, while she was not complacent about uptake in younger age groups, there was reason for optimism:

“Let’s, in a really grim situation, hold onto some positivity when we get it.

“The uptake in the groups that we have vaccinated so far is way beyond anything I could have dared to hope for.

“If you had told me a couple weeks ago that we would vaccinate 98% of older care home residents, I wouldn’t have believed you.

“That might have been more believable because of the nature of care homes. But if you had told me that it would be over 90% of over-80s, I would absolutely not have believed you.

“That is a credit to those doing the vaccination but actually it is bigger signal of the willingness and enthusiasm of the public to come forward to be vaccinated and I suspect that we’re going to see that right throughout the programme, because people want to be vaccinated against this horrible illness.”

 

 

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