The Scottish First Minister has in recent days been faced with anger over the pace of Scotland’s jab rollout. She claimed yesterday that the country is aiming to have all over-80s, care home residents and carers, and front line health and social care workers vaccinated by the start of February.
However, the Telegraph has now alleged the country has been given 700,000 doses from the UK’s supplies and that 400,000 of these are still ‘unused’.
The Scottish Government has hit out at the figures as “highly misleading”.
The paper’s Scottish political editor Simon Johnson said official figures show that, between Friday and Sunday last week, over 750,000 doses had been administered in England compared to 40,151 in Scotland.
John Lamont, Scottish Conservative MP for Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk, expressed anger at the figures on Twitter.
He said: “What’s going on with the vaccine roll-out in Scotland? Why are we being left behind?”
According to Edinburgh Live yesterday, a nurse in Edinburgh was turned away from her coronavirus vaccine appointment because of a lack of stock.
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This week England’s roll-out was extended to those aged over 70 as the nation seeks to increase the scope of who it prioritises.
In Scotland, this same group is due to start receiving jabs some time later this month, Ms Sturgeon has confirmed.
Other figures contest the situation in Scotland. The BBC has cited Scottish Government figures which showed 224,840 people had received one dose of a vaccine and 3,331 people had received a second, as of January 15.
On the same day, National Immunisation Management Service data showed just under 3.2 million vaccines had been given in England, suggesting the proportional difference between the countries was not that large.
