Chamber and committees

Vaccinations are taking place differently across Scotland to reflect the needs of local communities. NHS Scotland Heath Boards are responsible for the local delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine. As such, Health Boards are responsible for making decisions regarding local delivery in line with the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) guidance. This includes how to deliver vaccines to their those with known allergies.

Information for those with known allergies is available in the green book .

The Coronavirus Vaccination Helpline can be called on: 0800 0308013 (available 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week) for advice relating to receiving vaccinations in individual health boards.

Further general information about the coronavirus vaccine and its delivery is also available at NHS Inform .

We will be issuing a communication to people who do not attend their appointment, in the hope that they will take up a new vaccination appointment. We have also made it clear on NHS Inform and within the follow-up invite, that should people wish to receive a vaccination this can be done by contacting the helpline on 0800 030 8013, where an appointment can be made on their behalf.

We do not hold this information and I would encourage the Member to engage with the local Health Boards for it.

To date, our latest management information indicates a wastage rate of around only 1.8% - well below our planning assumption of 5%, which is a precautionary approach for worst case scenarios and in line with global best practice.

Some wastage is unavoidable for a variety of reasons based on the characteristics of the vaccine, logistical issues with cold chain supply, storage failure and/or specific clinical situations such as a breakout of COVID-19 in a care home.

Nonetheless, any wastage is reviewed to ensure any preventable loss is avoided in the future and guidance on avoiding wastage has been issued to health boards across the country.

The Chief Medical Officer has issued a letter to all the Health Boards on 5 February, which sets out the guidance on how Health Boards should seek to vaccinate those within eligible JCVI priority cohorts who are in hospital prior to discharge, where that cohort is currently receiving vaccination in the community. We expect the guidance to be operationalised and implemented by all hospitals including Ayr Hospital and University Hospital Crosshouse.

Care should be taken to check records for previous history of COVID-19 vaccination, confirmation of vaccine and steps should be taken to enable a second dose as appropriate. These decisions will be made by clinicians, taking into account a range of factors as set out above.

Vaccinating people as soon as they enter hospital will not immediately prevent COVID-19 infection or disease, as it takes 2-3 weeks for an immune response to develop from vaccination.

The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) letter can be viewed here: CMO(2021)03 - COVID-19 vaccination programme: bringing forward priority cohorts (scot.nhs.uk) .

In management information collated on 3 March 2021, a total of 3066 staff capable of undertaking contact tracing activity, were available for deployment across NHS Scotland territorial boards and the National Contact Tracing Centre run by National Services Scotland (NSS). A summary of this information, broken down by health board, is set out in the following table. The Scottish Government does not hold data centrally on the proportion of these staff who are newly recruited or redeployed; the recruitment and deployment of staff is a matter for the board.

Scottish Government keep contact tracing capacity under active review, in line with modelling undertaken by Public Health Scotland, with all boards required to maintain a total national capacity commensurate with demand. Test and Protect has successfully operated throughout Autumn and Winter despite the increased volume of cases, including during and after the Festive Period. We continue to meet demand within the system, deploying around 1000 staff per day as required.

The National Contact Tracing Centre contracted with the private sector to provide staff to temporarily augment existing NHS capacity. NSS oversee training and performance of staff to ensure quality is maintained. External partners currently account for less than 30% of the trained contact tracing workforce and are deployed as required. The significant majority of contact tracing staff on any given day are NHS employees. All contact tracing in Scotland is, and will remain NHS led.

The current contracts will end this month and there will be a significant reduction in the use of the private sector from April now the NHS workforce is established with over 2000 NHS staff trained and available for deployment. A Framework Agreement has been established from April to provide resource on a flexible basis to build resilience during peaks in demand for Contact Tracing services.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommendation continues to be that an age-based approach is the best way to address the risk of severe illness and mortality. This simple approach helps us to do that as quickly as possible. Calling people forward in age cohorts is operationally very simple and this process has already worked well during the earlier stages of the programme. This approach will be taken by the 4 Nations across the UK and we will continue to vaccinate as quickly as supplies allow.

The JCVI has published its recommendations for vaccination of the remainder of the adult population, beyond cohorts 1 to 9. In light of these recommendations, and once we have offered vaccination to the main priority groups, we will continue to follow their advice by inviting adults under 50 who have not received the vaccine in age cohort. These are as follows:

• All those aged 40-49 years
• All those aged 30-39 years
• All those aged 18-29 years

This advice by the JCVI is supported by the evidence that the risk of hospitalisation and critical care admission with COVID-19 increases with age. Those at highest risk of hospitalisation outside of cohorts 1-9 are those aged 40-49 years.

Vaccine doses are being allocated to local health boards on an equitable basis, recognising the different population share and geography. The list of vaccination centres within SIMD quintile is as follows:

SIMD 2020 Quintile Vaccination Centres

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-35171 on 11 March 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The decision to withdraw funding from Autism Network Scotland is linked to the role of the organisation and is not directly linked to the evaluation of the Scottish Autism Strategy. Autism Network Scotland has been operating on reduced funding and a reduced role in this financial year following a series of discussions over a long period.

The decision to withdraw funding from Autism Network Scotland, which does not provide direct support to autistic people or their families, has been taken over a long period of time and spans a wide range of discussions with the previous and current Directors.

The organisation was asked to wind up existing projects in February 2020 and funding was reduced. Autism Network Scotland was, however, given an additional opportunity to set out what it could contribute going forward in response to a request from the current Director and this has been considered in detail by the Scottish Government.