'We went as fast as we could', says Nicola Sturgeon after nearly 600 care home deaths since first vaccination

Care home residents may have died from Covid-19 caught in the middle of the second wave as they were waiting for or just after their first dose of the vaccine, the chief medical officer has said.

In total, 2,980 people in care homes have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, with 1,918 deaths taking place during the first wave of the virus.

Since early September, around the point the second wave began to take hold, 1,007 care home residents have died.

In the weeks since the first vaccination in Scotland, 587 care home residents have died, with 326 passing in the past three weeks, National Records of Scotland data shows.

Almost 600 care home residents have died since the start of the vaccination roll-out.

Despite the high numbers of deaths, the First Minister said the vaccine roll-out to care homes went as quickly as possible.

Chief medical officer Gregor Smith said it was possible some residents may have died due to becoming infected before the Covid-19 vaccine could provide protection, a process that takes about three weeks.

Speaking at her daily coronavirus briefing on Monday, Ms Sturgeon said 98 per cent of care home residents had been vaccinated which was “quicker than other parts of the UK”.

She said: "We started vaccinating in care homes as soon as we had vaccine supply, I wish we would have been able to do that much sooner but we didn’t have an approved vaccine to do it.

"We’ve done care homes as quickly as possible and we’ve done care homes, I appreciate the comparisons that will be made in other cohorts, quicker than other parts of the UK, certainly England, so we couldn’t have done care homes any more quickly than we have.

"There is a lag effect obviously. It doesn’t give you protection the day you are vaccinated, that’s the point we have been making. It takes two weeks, that is the estimate for the protection to kick in.

"Unfortunately there will continue to be some people after they are vaccinated for a period will become ill and unfortunately potentially dying with Covid and obviously we don’t yet know the extent to which it stops people getting the virus and passing it on."

Dr Smith said the ‘lag effect’ with Covid-19 deaths, where it can take weeks after the initial infection for a patient to die from the disease, meant those dying in care homes may have caught the disease just before or just after they received the vaccine.

He said: "Unfortunately some of the deaths we are seeing within our care home population just now, the infections themselves may have actually started before vaccination or in the period immediately after vaccination and it is particularly tragic I think in those circumstances that people were so close to the vaccination at that point in time.

"By making sure that we have prioritised this group of people across our population, those who are most vulnerable, by concentrating on the care homes first and foremost, as soon as that vaccine was available I think that we stand greatest opportunity to try to limit any further deaths within that group.”

In care homes, 98 per cent of residents and 88 per cent of staff have now received a dose of the vaccine.

A total of 575,987 Scots have received at least one vaccine dose.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.