SCOTLAND is on track to meet its vaccine targets despite Pfizer jag shortages, the Health Secretary has announced.
Humza Yousaf said he was confident all adults would be offered their first jag by the end of July – but warned the Delta variant is a “bump in the road” in the Government’s plan to ease lockdown.
Nicola Sturgeon will update MSPs on Tuesday about the timelines for lifting restrictions, with Boris Johnson expected to push back unlocking plans in England due to the so-called Indian variant.
Speaking on BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show, Yousaf would not speculate on what the First Minister will announced but was optimistic about the chances of avoiding another nationwide lockdown.
He said: “If we can, as we hope we can with the vaccination, [we can] effectively live with this virus so we don’t have to go into perpetual lockdowns.
“I’m not going to pre-empt what we are going to say to the Parliament next week but that is exactly the kind of questions we are asking.
“It’s important we understand fully the link between positive cases, hospitalisations, severity of illness, how long are people staying in hospital, are they going then from acute into ICU – these are all the questions we are looking at weeks of data to make sure we’ve got a firm answer before we give you a decision and the public a decision about what the future is.”
Last week, Yousaf warned that reduced supplies of the Pfizer vaccine could restrict the rollout in Scotland.
Speaking on the Sunday Show earlier, the Health Secretary stressed that “in any vaccination rollout programme, one of the limiting factors is vaccine supply”.
He added: “To be very, very clear, we have enough supply to complete our programme.
“Our next milestone will be the end of next month to complete all first doses for the adult population and we are on schedule to do that.
"But clearly, if we have more supply, we can go faster – we can do more drop-in clinics for example.”
Yousaf has written to UK counterpart Matt Hancock to seek assurances about vaccine supply.
He explained: “I spoke to Matt Hancock about this at the tail end of last week and had some message exchange also with UK Government minister for vaccines Nadhim Zahawi. Both were very positive.
“I think all four nations are in the same place around that limit of supply of Pfizer.”
The SNP minister added: “We will continue to work together collaboratively to see what we can do to source more supply. If we don’t get more supply, then we can’t go even faster, as we’d like to do.
“This is a race, as we know – one lane the virus is in, the other lane the vaccine. We want to make sure the vaccine is absolutely ahead of the virus.”
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