NICOLA Sturgeon has praised the “fantastic” work of those involved in Scotland’s Covid-19 vaccine roll-out after data showed the country’s vaccination rate leading across Europe.

The First Minister shared the figures from the Our World in Data source, showing Scotland has edged ahead of Wales to deliver vaccines at the fastest rate of any European country.

The data, collected from official sources around the world, shows the seven-day rolling average of the number of daily vaccine doses administered per 100 people is 0.89, slightly ahead of Wales.

Northern Ireland was third with 0.68 per 100 people, the UK overall was fourth with 0.64 per 100 people and England was fifth with 0.62 per 100 people.

Serbia, Norway, Slovakia, Greece, Poland and Denmark followed, with Austria, Croatia and Iceland at the bottom end of the table.

Scotland’s First Minister welcomed the achievement online. “The teams delivering Scotland’s Covid vaccination programme are doing fantastic work,” she wrote alongside the data table. “My thanks to all of them.”

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It comes as Scotland recorded another record-breaking daily total of Covid jags delivered, with 64,881 people given their first dose.

Jeane Freeman said at this afternoon’s Scottish Government coronavirus briefing that as of 8.30am today 1,113,628 people have received their first dose in Scotland.

She was not able to give a detailed breakdown of the figures due to a technical issue in data collection, but added the update would be provided on the Scottish Government website at 2pm.

However, the Health Secretary added that the number of vaccine appointments in Scotland will need to be reduced in the next few weeks.

She told viewers: “The uptake we have seen so far has been both remarkable and very welcome.”

But, she said, due to a “combination of circumstances – remarkably high uptake, a temporary reduction in supply from Pfizer and the need to ensure people can receive second doses on time means we need to reduce the number of appointments we schedule over the next few weeks.”

Freeman added: “As soon as supply improves our programme will scale up again.”

She said the vaccination programme in Scotland remains on course to hit its targets.