NICOLA Sturgeon has confirmed Scotland’s vaccine programme is set to accelerate as she sought to ease minds about blood clot fears.

The First Minister, speaking at the Scottish Government coronavirus briefing, announced 456 cases were recorded in the past 24 hours with a positivity rate of 4.7%.

No deaths were registered among people who had tested positive in the previous 28 days, though registration offices tend to be closed over weekends.

Some 447 people were in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19, a decrease of 14 in 24 hours. Of those, 40 remained in intensive care.

Top of Sturgeon’s agenda was allaying concerns about vaccines after countries such as Germany, France the Netherlands and Ireland paused their use of the AstraZeneca jag over concerns about possible side effects.

Nine countries had suspended the AstraZeneca vaccinations by this afternoon – despite the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency stating there is no indication of a link between the vaccine and reports of blood clots.

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The First Minister said: "You might be hearing reports of this in the media and you might have concerns as a result. So I want to take the opportunity today to address this directly.

"In the UK, the decision to suspend the use of any vaccine is a matter of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The MHRA has confirmed to us that there is no current evidence of an increase in blood clots being caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine. That is the issue that has paused the vaccine in some other countries.

"As you would expect, though, the MHRA is continuing to monitor this carefully, and remains in regular contact with other regulators."

She added: "There is, however, significant and growing evidence of the benefits of vaccination in reducing death, illness and we hope, transmission – and the vaccination programme continues to make very good progress.

"For all these reasons, we continue to urge people to come forward for vaccination, including with the AstraZeneca vaccine, when invited to do so."

Sturgeon confirmed she will get the vaccine “without hesitation” when invited to do so.

The First Minister confirmed that another 20,294 Scots received their first vaccine jag in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,908,991.

A further 1907 people received their second dose yesterday, for a total of 161,945.

The SNP leader said she expected “the pace of vaccination to pick up significantly again this week in line with increased supplies”.

She explained: “We expect that, taking first and second doses together, there will be around 400,000 vaccinations done over the course of this week. That represents a significant increase on the level of vaccination we've seen in the past couple of weeks.

"Supplies permitting, that increase is likely to be continue into April.”

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The SNP leader confirmed that by the middle of April, ministers expect to have offered a first dose of the vaccine to everybody over the age of 50, all unpaid carers and all adults who have particular underlying health conditions.

“That target, when we meet it, will be a really significant milestone,” she added.

"That rapid progress with vaccination provides all of us with firmer grounds for hope about the weeks and months ahead. We are already seeing the impact of vaccination in reducing deaths."

Sturgeon cited a recent Public Health Scotland study – in partnership with the University of Glasgow – which found that vaccination can significantly reduce transmission of the virus.

The First Minister said: “And that gives us greater confidence that – as more and more people receive first doses – we will have some scope to relax restrictions, albeit we will still need to do that carefully."

Scotland's chief medical officer also dismissed concerns about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Joining Sturgeon at the briefing, he said the actual number of clotting incidents which had occurred among the 17 million people given the vaccine so far in the UK and continental Europe was "in fact somewhat less" that would be expected.

"We're not seeing any signal come through whatsoever that suggests that there are any more blood clots than would be expected with this population," Smith explained. 

"At this point in time there is no evidence whatsoever of causality between this small number of reported incidents, and use of the vaccine."