Covid vaccination: Admitting mistakes and a flexible approach are good signs for Scotland – Scotsman comment

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.

Procedures have been changed at the mass vaccination centre at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre to reduce wastage of Covid vaccines (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA)

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,” Professor 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 process right and 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.

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