Chamber and committees

A lot of different actions have been taken by health boards, through communication and through the location of vaccination centres, to target groups in which uptake is lower and where we know that people are less likely to come forward, for a variety of reasons. Actions include having vaccination centres in places of worship and other community settings, providing concessionary bus travel to appointments and working with community leaders in different parts of society.

All of us have a part to play and should do everything that we can to get those messages across.

It is worth noting that, even in the 30 to 39 age group, uptake is high. Uptake across the age groups is higher than for flu jabs, although not all age groups are eligible for flu jabs. However, we are seeing a much higher vaccination uptake than we have seen in recent years for flu. This is about trying to get to those groups where we need uptake to be higher. A range of approaches are being used, and will continue to be used, to try to do that.

Our commitment, which was to ensure that the public inquiry was established before the end of the calendar year, will be delivered.

We are in the process of identifying and appointing a chair to the inquiry. We intend to update Parliament on that before the Christmas recess. Once the chair has been appointed and the inquiry has been established, the timescale and process for starting to take evidence and other aspects of the inquiry will be down to the independent chair who will take it forward.

They should be able to receive their booster jag here. There may be some individuals in a particular category who have issues, and any members who have constituents in that position should let us know and we will look into the individual circumstances.

In general, anyone who is eligible for a booster in Scotland and has not received an appointment or cannot get one through the website can call the helpline on 0800 030 8013. That includes anyone who has received one or both doses outside of Scotland. If you do not have an appointment, call the helpline and they will assist you to get one.

As far as I am aware, no formal response to the letter has been received yet, although the UK Government indicated its initial views on it yesterday, as it was perfectly entitled to do.

We will continue to argue for things that we think are sensible. It would be good if all four nations, through the medium of the Cabinet Office briefing room, could get together to discuss different approaches to the matter in the coming days, and I hope that that will be possible.

That said, all four nations are communicating closely. I took part in a four nations call with the other First Ministers and Michael Gove on Saturday evening. I know that the health secretary has had a number of discussions with counterparts in the other nations, so there is good and close communication.

However, some decisions are driven by the views of the UK Government so, on occasion, if we think that different things have to be done, it is really important for us to press the UK Government. In that regard, I speak to the First Minister of Wales reasonably often and we exchange views on these matters, and we will continue to do so.

Efforts were made to ensure that vaccination centres, where possible, could stay open safely, but everybody, particularly those from the parts of the country that were most heavily affected by the storm, knows that it was not possible to safely keep every vaccination centre open, and it would have been deeply irresponsible to have sought to do so.

Anybody whose vaccination appointment had to be cancelled will have that rescheduled, and everybody will get access to vaccination. Work will already be under way on that. The Deputy First Minister is about to make a statement more generally on the severe impacts of the storm that many people in the north, and some people in the south, are still experiencing, such as still not having access to power. There is a significant amount of work under way to make sure that people are reconnected as quickly as possible, that welfare support is provided in the interim and that any wider impacts, of which vaccination is certainly one, will be rectified and caught up with as soon as possible.

If Stuart McMillan wants to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care about his individual constituent, I am sure that that case can be looked into. However, it is important to stress that, in the vast majority of cases, a successful route to safe vaccination can be found, and that usually includes people who have a terminal illness.

Most people who are in that category will still benefit from vaccination. However, support is available where vaccination is not straightforward. The local helpline, the Covid status helpline or local vaccination centres can help to answer questions about the vaccine and the arrangements that are in place for exemptions.

That is the general position but, if there are individual cases in which somebody has not, for one reason or another, been able to navigate the system, I ask that members please let us know about them so that we can look into them as quickly as possible.

The programme for over-70s will be completed as soon as everybody who is going to come forward for a vaccination has come forward. People in the over-70 age group have been receiving invitations since early October and the vast majority are already vaccinated, so if anybody in that age group is not vaccinated, it is because they have chosen not to be or have been unable to come forward and get vaccinated.

We continue to put out the message that if you are one of those people, it is not too late to get vaccinated. Go online, book an appointment, phone the helpline, the number of which I have just given, and get an appointment. Everybody in that age group who wanted a vaccination has been offered one, and we are now working rapidly through the other age groups and will continue to do so.

I will not. I do not think that, at this stage, instructing that on a blanket basis would be right or appropriate—or the best use of resources that are under pressure, although they are coping very well. Today, of all days, I am not very sympathetic to any criticisms of our contact tracing teams, who are doing heroic work right now to identify and understand the transmission patterns of those cases.

We can use—and are using—targeted enhanced testing where cases are identified. That will start with the testing of close contacts of those cases, because we want close contacts to isolate as well. It is important to note that health protection teams are best placed to understand and judge where enhanced testing should be used.

There might be instances in which door-to-door testing is appropriate, as was the case earlier this year in the south side of Glasgow, but that has to be driven by the assessment of health protection teams. In relation to the nine cases and the look-back surveillance that is being done, door-to-door testing would not necessarily be the right use of resources at this point. However, if health protection teams think otherwise, they have the ability and the resources to get on and do that.

It would not really be the role of the JCVI to do that, although it is integrally involved in advising Governments about who to vaccinate.

However, I know that such discussions are on-going all the time. Members will have heard many representatives of vaccine companies talking in the media in recent days: those companies are already thinking about how they may need—it is “may” at the moment, as we do not yet know the impact—to change or adapt their vaccines to deal with the new variant. Some of them have given indications—as I heard Pfizer do publicly the other day—of how long they think that that will take. That work is already under way.

Given how quickly, relatively, the vaccines were developed from a standing start, I think that we can have confidence that the scientific community and vaccine developers and manufacturers are well placed to do anything that is required. However, we do not yet know that the vaccines are less effective, so let us not assume that at this stage. Even if that is the case, the current vaccines will still be hugely important.

No, it does not necessarily mean either of those things. It is not necessarily the case that we suddenly think that immunity is waning faster, but we have a new variant that some think may manage to evade the immunity of the vaccines or natural immunity from past infection. Getting as many antibodies into people as possible—to be non-clinical in how I express it—becomes all the more important. That is the rationale for reducing the gap at this stage.

We do not yet know what the frequency of the vaccination programme will be in the years ahead. My working assumption is that, like for flu, it will be a regular programme. We should certainly be planning for that. We do not yet know, but it may be a regular three-dose vaccination programme, or there may be developments in the vaccines that enable a single dose. There is so much that we do not know yet, and we need to get on with doing what we do know about, which is getting boosters to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.