Coronavirus in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon will listen to all Scottish businesses offering to help vaccine rollout

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon said she is prepared to explore offers from companies that wish to help the nation in vaccinating as many people as possible in the fight against the coronavirus.

The SNP leader said she has been “inundated” with offers from businesses who are willing to provide their venues and staff to assist with the vaccine programme.

Ms Sturgeon said while not all offers will be appropriate, she is willing to explore many of those that have been put forward by traders across the country.

During a coronavirus daily briefing on Tuesday she said: “My own emails have been inundated with companies offering assistance.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wearing a face mask picture: supplied

"Not all of these offers of assistance will be practical to take up, it won’t be that everyone who offers their premises or staff will be taken up, but we will explore all of these offers.

“I am not going to stand here and say I wouldn’t like more resource, because we want this done as quickly as possible, but this is a programme that has absolute focus of the Scottish Government.”

In a Twitter post on 31 December, BrewDog co-founder James Watt addressed both Nicola Sturgeon and UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock suggesting they use his venues free of charge to distribute the coronavirus vaccine to people across the UK.

Mr Watt tweeted: “Hi Matt Hancock and Nicola Sturgeon. We would like to offer our closed BrewDog venues to help with a quick roll out of the vaccine. For free.”

Supermarket chain Morrisons has also announced that a multitude of its store car parks will be used as Covid vaccination centres.

The company says three of its store car parks will be used as Covid vaccine centres from Monday 11 January, with another 47 also being offered.

David Potts, Chief Executive of Morrisons, said the assets of the company are “at the disposal of the country”.

Ms Sturgeon confirmed well over 100,000 people have now been vaccinated and the official figure will be published on Wednesday this week.

“We have got people working on this across the health service and health boards, people who are doing nothing else but making sure this programme is working,” she added.

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