Nicola Sturgeon shamed as SNP fails to reach own coronavirus vaccination targets

Douglas Ross claims Scotland ‘behind target’ on vaccinations

The Tories said with about 12,500 people being vaccinated each day, the Scottish Government would miss its target of giving the injection to 560,000 by the end of January. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross blasted Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to meet her own target so far. He said: “If we are to reach the milestone that they want by the end of this month we need to be vaccinating about 20,000 people every day.

“I welcome the fact that a number of people are getting vaccinated and these numbers are going up day on day but we’re still behind the Scottish Government’s own targets on a daily basis.

“So we’re really got to ramp this up.

“That’s why I’ve been saying let’s ensure that this mass rollout can happen as quickly as possible.

“We know the supplies are here in Scotland, we’ve just got to get them out right now to everyone who needs them, to these key groups, and as quickly as possible because we’re still behind the curve.”

Tory Health spokesman Donald Cameron said: “These figures confirm that the SNP are not moving fast enough and lagging behind their own targets.

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“At the current speed, they risk falling short of expectations. The vaccine is our key weapon against this virus, so we will continue to push the government to accelerate their plans and focus on increasing the pace.”

It comes as the First Minister said Scotland could vaccinate people against coronavirus round the clock in a bid to see people given protection against the virus as quickly as possible.

The SNP leader did not rule out younger people being offered vaccination appointments on a 24/7 basis.

Ms Sturgeon said: “We will look at anything and everything that allows us to get this vaccination programme done as quickly as possible.”

Her comments came as she confirmed that by Monday a total of 175,942 had received their first dose of vaccine.

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Ms Sturgeon said supplies of the vaccine were still “relatively limited”, and that with the focus currently on getting jabs to care home residents and those aged over 80, these groups did “not lend themselves to out-of-hours vaccination”.

But when asked if Scotland could run vaccination clinics around the clock, the First Minister said: “Once we get into the general population, yes, if that is going to help us get through them faster then we will look at that.”

Speaking at her daily coronavirus briefing, the First Minister stressed the government would need to be satisfied a large enough workforce was available to do this, saying that “you can’t have the same people working right round the clock”.

She stated, however, that “this is the kind of work and thinking and modelling … that is ongoing all the time”.

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The First Minister said: “At the moment, because of the relatively limited nature of supplies, although that is growing all the time, and the population groups, we have been focusing on care homes.

“But once we get into the younger age groups I think the ways in which, the times at which, the settings in which we vaccinate people will become potentially much more flexible.

“I don’t rule anything out. We want to get through this programme as quickly as possible, we want everybody in the adult population to have this vaccine as quickly as possible.”

She stressed: “We want to get this vaccination programme completed as quickly as possible, it is not in the government’s interests to slow this down, it is in our interests to get it speeded up as far as practical.

“The sooner we get the whole population vaccinated the sooner we get back to a greater degree of normality and can start to put this virus behind us.”

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