Coronavirus in Scotland: NHS Louisa Jordan to administer 5,000 Covid vaccinations in a single day

One of Scotland’s makeshift coronavirus field hospitals is set to vaccinate more than 5,000 people in a single day.

New photos from inside the NHS Louisa Jordan, based at Glasgow’s SEC Centre, show hundreds of Scots waiting in line to receive their immunisation jabs.

Earlier today, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon paid tribute to the hospital’s vaccinator teams.

The facility, which opened in April 2020, was originally intended to provide 300 extra critical care beds to relieve pressure on Scotland’s intensive care units.

Partially repurposed, the Louisa Jordan has held coronavirus vaccination clinics since early December last year.

In a post on social media, the hospital’s official account said the mass vaccination effort was “well underway”, adding that jabs would be administered “throughout the day” in collaboration with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

The First Minister told followers on Twitter: “My thanks to vaccinators [at] NHS Louisa Jordan and across the country working hard to make the light at the end of the tunnel that bit brighter - one jag (sic) at a time.”

On Thursday, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman unveiled details of Scotland’s vaccine deployment plan.

She said that by the first week of February, the first two priority groups - which includes care home staff and residents, frontline health workers and people aged 80 or older in the community - would have had their first dose of the vaccine.

Next in line for a vaccine will be those aged 70 and over, who the Scottish Government hopes to vaccinate by mid-February,

Ms Freeman said those aged over 65 and people who are clinically extremely vulnerable will be vaccinated by the beginning of March.

She added that current modelling suggests that Scotland will be able to give around 400,000 people a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine each week from the end of February.

New photos from inside the NHS Louisa Jordan, based at Glasgow’s SEC Centre, show hundreds of Scots waiting in line to receive their immunisation jabs.

The Scottish Government then hopes to begin vaccinating people aged over 50 by the start of May.

On this timescale, everyone in Scotland over the age of 18 should have been offered one of the Covid vaccinations by the start of autumn.

On Friday, the Scottish Government removed its vaccine rollout plan from its website after the UK Government raised about sensitive information contained in the document.

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