Chamber and committees

This is the largest flu immunisation programme ever delivered in Scotland, with a planning assumption of 2.4 million people offered the vaccine –almost double the last flu season 2020-21 uptake.

People in Phase 1 groups – those aged 65 and over, those under 65 with increased clinical risk, health and social care workers, and household members of those shielding have been eligible since the start of October 2020, and they will remain eligible throughout flu season.

Phase 2 commenced in December with those aged 60-64 being administered their free flu vaccination.

The timing between being invited and booking an appointment for flu vaccination varies depending on the method of booking and the form of contact.

The Scottish Government procured sufficient vaccine to vaccinate all those who have been invited to receive the seasonal flu vaccine. Everyone who was eligible will have received an appointment for their vaccination. The flu vaccination has been delivered in a phased approach, prioritising those at greatest clinical risk.

Each year, at the end of every flu season, Public Health England publishes overviews of influenza surveillance results in the UK, from the winter period. This season’s report is yet to be published. However you can access last year’s report on the link below.

Surveillance of influenza and respiratory viruses, UK: Winter Winter 2019 to 2020 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

We are hugely grateful to the efforts over recent months of the many key workers in different sectors across Scotland as they have risen to the challenge of responding to the pandemic. In order to be eligible for the £500 payment, social care providers must be registered with the Care Inspectorate. We are currently working with stakeholders for services which are not registered with Care Inspectorate, to determine what, if anything, can be done in this instance. There are complex logistical and practical issues to work through to establish eligibility for staff who work for these organisations.

Number of vaccines administered is included as part of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) data . This includes information on numbers vaccinated in JCVI priority groups, and weekly information about vaccine supply.

Local data can be found on Public Health Scotland’s interactive dashboard . Including vaccinations by council area, available here .

The Scottish Government is continuing to engage with the JCVI on the issue of priority vaccines for terminally ill patients. Many end of life patients will already be included in cohorts 1-9, either through age or on the basis of their diagnosis.

I have written to the JCVI on this matter. In their response the JCVI have advised that for the first phase of the COVID-19 mass vaccination programme, priority should be given to protecting those most at risk of dying from COVID-19.

JCVI have now confirmed that their position is that terminally ill patients will be vaccinated in either group 4 or 6. Individuals who are defined as clinically extremely vulnerable will have been vaccinated as part of group 4.

JCVI priority group 4 includes all those 70 years of age and over, and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals. Group 6 includes all individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality. Group 6 also includes unpaid carers, including all adult carers and young carers aged 16 to 18.

Priority groups 4 and 6 are not completely distinct groups as such. In practice, delivery to these groups will be a matter of weeks apart. A person can therefore move in and out of these two groups with time rather than being static in one group.

We will continue to keep this matter under review. Following the initial correspondence with the JCVI, I have written a further letter asking that JCVI also continue to do the same, and we are awaiting a response to this.

There have not been incidences of faults with the booking system.

There are times when there may not be many appointments to choose from and on one occasion NHS Lanarkshire had assumed that same day appointments could be offered, which was not supported by the system at the time. The only time appointments can’t be re-scheduled is when there is no available capacity at the vaccination clinics. The system works on having available appointment slots which are set up by Health Boards. A slot can be booked numerous times if the clinic has several vaccinators working at the same time.

We have seen several occasions where all slots are full with appointments and we then work with Health Boards to support them in opening other clinics or adding additional vaccinators to create more capacity. We do not allow overbooking.

For the weekly period of 1 March to 7 March there were a total of 63,764 calls 173 of which were abandoned. This equates to 99.72% of calls being answered.

We have also trained an additional 600 staff, of which 320 are on shift at some point each day.

Wait times are being monitored, The average call wait time for the period 1 March to 7 of Match were 6 seconds for the rebooking line and 1 second for the priority/general enquiry line.

We follow a general approach for vaccinating hospital patients who are prioritised for vaccine as per the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) advice.

One of the first things we recommended and undertook when vaccination started in December was to vaccinate those elderly people in ‘longer-stay’ hospital settings - i.e. those who were clinically stable and therefore appropriate to be vaccinated.

It’s important to note that vaccinating people as soon as they enter hospital will not immediately prevent COVID-19 infection or disease as we all know, as it takes time for an immune response to develop to the vaccine (2-3 weeks).

The recommendation for patients admitted to hospital for non-COVID illness, is not to give a vaccine until the patient recovers from their acute illness.

This is a standard recommendation in the Green Book for all vaccines and applied across all UK countries.

The Chief Medical Officer advises that patients should be only vaccinated once they have recovered, so any side effects are not confused with symptoms of the disease they were admitted to hospital for.

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) require that the packing down of any vaccine under the exemption provided in section 10 of the 1968 Medicines Act is done by the same legal entity that is administering the vaccine.

This allows supplies of the vaccine to be packed down, if smaller quantities than the licensed pack of 195 vials (975 doses) are required, and sent to other hospital sites and additional premises, including NHS vaccination centres, mobile units and care homes within a Health Board area, where NHS nurses and other staff are administering the vaccine.

GP practices, which are separate legal entities, are directly receiving the vaccine, which supports their role in delivering the national vaccination programme.

Although the requirement causes some logistical issues, the single biggest limiting issue to this remains the supply of the vaccines.

More than 12,000 active vaccinators are registered on our national Vaccination Management Tool.

Availability of vaccine supply is a key factor in determining the size of the vaccination workforce deployed at any given time, with workforce requirements fluctuating accordingly. In the period 10-16 February 2021, supply dictated that c. 1225 WTE vaccinators and c. 832 WTE support staff be deployed, supplementing those GPs participating in the programme.

National training events on the administration of the Pfizer vaccine took place on 3 and 7 December and were attended by more than 4,000 individuals. Training events on the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine were subsequently delivered on 4 and 7 January and were attended by approximately 4,700 individuals. This is in addition to training delivered by individual Health Boards on an ongoing basis.

All prospective vaccinators’ training requirements will be tailored to reflect their particular skills, knowledge and previous experience. However, all vaccinators, regardless of previous experience, are required to complete COVID-19 vaccine specific training.