Covid: Scotland must urgently improve its vaccination rate – Scotsman comment

On Saturday alone, a record 598,389 people across the UK received their first dose of a Covid vaccine. By the end of Sunday, the total number of people in Scotland who have been inoculated since the process began on December 8 stood at 575,987.

Nicola Sturgeon's single most important job is to ensure the vaccination of Scotland's population as quickly as possible (Picture: Scottish government)

Last Monday, Nicola Sturgeon came under heavy criticism for the slow pace of Scotland’s vaccination programme after figures showed that just 11,364 people were vaccinated the previous day.

A week later and the picture was even worse with the figure for Sunday vaccinations slumping further to only 9,628 doses.

Once again the First Minister sought to defend progress but admitted “it looks to me as if, for some reason, we are simply falling off a bit on a Sunday ... I can't tell you any more than that right now in terms of the explanation”. She stressed the need to “make sure we're going at a certain pace every single day”.

Her handling of the pandemic crisis has won praise from even some political opponents with her greater caution – Scotland’s restrictions have tended to be stricter than those in the rest of the UK and last longer – vindicated by the persistence of the threat posed by Covid.

However, there are now suggestions that the UK government’s success in securing vaccine supplies and the swiftness of their distribution could produce a surge in support for Boris Johnson, who has hitherto been somewhat in the First Minister’s shadow.

One reasonable defence of the Scottish government’s record so far is that it chose to focus on giving the vaccine to people in care homes – a more time-consuming process than dealing with healthy members of the public at centralised locations. And it is most welcome that 98 per cent of care home residents and 88 per cent of staff have received their first dose.

However, this only partially explains why Scotland is “lagging miles behind the rest of the UK” – to quote Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross – with the total number of people given first doses for the whole of the UK at 8,977,329.

As we have said before and will continue to say, there is nothing more important than vaccinating the people of Scotland against Covid. The Scottish government must urgently find ways to improve its current performance.

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