Chamber and committees

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.

Once we have offered vaccination to initial priority groups, we will continue to follow the JCVI advice by inviting adults under 50 who have not yet received the vaccine in age cohorts, as follows:

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

This is supported by 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.

Given the scale of the COVID-19 Vaccination programmes and the unprecedented demands put on health services two organisations, KPMG and Cap Gemini, had been contracted to provide non-healthcare related support.

KPMG had been contracted to provide administrative support to the planning and delivery of a Covid-19 vaccination programme. KPMG identified areas of challenge and best practices that need to be resolved or built upon the delivery of the vaccine programme. The group was contracted between May 2020 to January 2021.

The second area was around workforce planning model was outsourced to Cap Gemini the delivery of COVID-19 vaccinations. The Cap Gemini contract built on the work undertaken on seasonal flu modelling to ensure that we had a detailed understanding of national and board level workforce requirements for delivery. We used this modelling in tandem with Health Boards’ own COVID-19 plans to provide assurance that we have sufficient staff capacity across NHS Scotland. The contract lasted for 3 weeks which started on 19 October 2020.

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.

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.

Our work is led by JCVI and delivery is dependent on supply.

To ensure that everyone has access to information about Covid-19 Vaccination, we have introduced Covid-19 Hotline here: (0800 030 8013).

The Covid-19 helpline was firstly introduced at start of the programme on 8 December 2020 and the rebooking service was added on 25 January 2021.

For further general information about the coronavirus vaccine and its delivery is also available at NHS Inform

Number of vaccines administered is included as part of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) data . The publication also includes information on numbers vaccinated in the 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 .

Vaccines are procured by the UK Vaccines Taskforce on a 4 Nations basis.

Supply information is commercially sensitive, and in line with arrangements across the 4 Nations we now publish information about supply once per week on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/

This information shows total cumulative supply allocated to and delivered into Scotland each week.

Number of vaccines administered is included as part of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) data and this includes the numbers of care homes residents that have been vaccinated. The publication also includes information on numbers vaccinated in the 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 .