Vaccination plans for Scotland

[trumpisaflump]

I'm posting here as I can't find any great online about this. Can anyone point me towards plans for Scotland's COVID vaccination for primary care? I'm frontline NHS and received my first dose mid December but to be honest I'm more concerned about when my 78 year old DM and 79 year old in laws will get their vaccine. On Twitter I see multiple tweets from English GPs stating they have vaccinated all the over 80s in their area and are on to overt 70s now.
I just don't seem to be getting the same feelings of impatience in Scotland re the rollout compared with England.

Must've been a good plan...

Vaccine Plan withdrawn as questions raised over details in it which may have led to security issues - vaccine holding points (esp Pfizer) are supposed to be secret but any sort of logistics info can lead to speedy dot joining.

Skimming comments on 2.7m or 60% population. That looks like a very high estimate and probably includes loads of double counting (eg over 80 but also carehome resident and also clinically vulnerable or over 50 and also NHS worker).

85 year old mum heard nothing yet here in Central Fife

My gp practice has put a message on fb to say they will be running a clinic on 30th January for over 80s and they will be contacting eligible people over the next couple of weeks

@WouldBeGood

Usually when the SG take something down there is a reason for it, like a change of plan

The UK Government asked the Scottish Government to take it down. The Tories are also now stating that Jean Freeman broke the ministerial code by sharing the vaccination plan (which was very good). This is despite the favt that the Tories stating earlier that they wanted more transparency from the SG over the vaccination roll out. On another note, test and tracers currently being vaccinated in order to ensure continuity.

I heard that they had to take it down because it inadvertently gave too much information about storage etc. and made the stocks vulnerable to terrorist attack. Isn't that also the problem with Freeman? She disclosed to a secret vaccine storage location? Pretty amateurish if so.

South Lanarkshire have started vaccinating over 80s this week, family member had hers today

North lanarkshire started on Monday too AFAIK. More places will start being used as vaccination centres as time goes on i think

@Y0uCann0tBeSer10us

I heard that they had to take it down because it inadvertently gave too much information about storage etc. and made the stocks vulnerable to terrorist attack. Isn't that also the problem with Freeman? She disclosed to a secret vaccine storage location? Pretty amateurish if so.

I don't think we have a high risk of terrorists , especially not ones in SL or wherever it was. Each to their own though.

Personally, I think that the location of the vaccine storage site (or one of them) is a fairly obvious security risk and was top secret for good reason. And the current UK terror threat level is 'severe' meaning that an attack is considered 'highly likely' so taking basic precautions is just common sense.

It's not so much a terror thing. It's a demand thing.

When the UK government signs details with Pfizer, or Astra Zeneca or whatever there will be confidentiality clauses. (And AFAIK the UK government is buying for ALL of the UK, not just England),

These vaccines are the most in-demand product in the world at the moment. The UK government don't want it out there how many they've bought, at what price and on what time scale because what's to then stop Russia, Japan, Mexico swooping in, offering twice the price and putting AZ or Pfizer in a difficult position. They will have asked the drugs companies to sign an non-disclosure agreement to that effect.

Then their own devolved administration publishes it online, for every single government in the world to see. What a bunch of amateurs. No wonder Westminster are furious - this could easily have cocked up the entire supply for the whole of the UK and it would be entirely the fault of the Scottish Government.

I think that's what they mean by "security of supply" or similar, about the companies supplying the vaccines in the quantities agreed, rather than about a terror attack. Although again, the vaccine is the most prized commodity on the market at present and i'm sure organised criminal gangs would love to have a few thousand vials to flog on the dark net.

Still a massive cock up.

If that's the case @RaspberryCoulis, isn't it too late? I mean the document was available online for several hours, presumably downloadable, so isn't the information out there? Is UK vaccine supply now at risk because of the Scottish government?

Who knows. Let's hope not, eh?

Puts the "can't get a hospital finished" and "let's discharge covid positive patients" fiascos into perspective though.

The BBC say:

"The document was deleted from the Scottish government website on Thursday morning after the UK government raised concerns about the level of detail it gave about how many vaccine doses the UK is due to receive.

It said the information was commercially sensitive and could threaten future supplies of the vaccine.

The PA press agency quoted a UK government source as saying: "The reason we didn't want to publish these figures was because everyone in the world wants these vaccines.

"If other countries see how much we are getting, they are likely to put pressure on the drug firms to give them some of our allocation."

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Donald Cameron said Ms Freeman had failed to properly respect the confidentiality of sensitive information.

He has written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon asking her to investigate whether the errors amounted to a breach of the ministerial code."

Warn your elderly relatives that appointments been given by telephone. I told my dad this and it turned out he’d missed it. He is pretty deaf and very frail and also doesn’t answer numbers he doesn’t know because of cold calling and scams. It turned out he had missed his appointment and they cannot fit him in until they get a new batch of vaccine. He is 87 and a lives alone, far away from me.

DH has just announced that he's not just a keyworker any more, he's a CRITICAL KEY WORKER. I think he wants a badge. (He's not NHS, he's a senior manager in the transport industry).

Unfortunately that means that I can't put myself forward for a covid vaccine volunteer role, as staff who are CRITICAL KEY WORKERS aren't allowed to volunteer and put themselves at risk of catching it, even if furloughed or WFH. And that goes for household members too.

That's fine, I was having second thoughts about standing in the cold for hours wearing a bastarding mask anyway. Doesn't mean he's going to get the magic jag any quicker though.

@RaspberryCoulis haha yes my DH is the same and is "red listed" in his work as a critical worker. His work even said that he shouldn't be doing any childcare because of the status and that I should thankfully my son got a key worker space at his private nursery (it's 1 key worker in our LA and his nursery is still under the 50% capacity limit/use a cascade system for places)

Is a critical key worker a new name for cat 1? Or is it something different? Is it defined anywhere?

@TheDuchessOfAquitaine

Is a critical key worker a new name for cat 1? Or is it something different? Is it defined anywhere?

Its a English government term that some work places are applying. Its basically a key worker but more narrowed down as far as I can tell to covid/EU direct stuff or shops/critical things. My DH is now listed as red critical worker by the LA - he's cat 2 but he does covid response hence he cannot be seconded or transferred anywhere out of his job role.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision

Thanks for the link!

There’s a new vaccination deployment plan out.

It changes the goal from the start of February to the end of February.

I couldn’t get the clicky link for volunteering TK work, but maybe just me.

I think as far as I can establish the "critical key worker" category is also people who keep the country running and whose replacements can't be trained immediately.

If lots of people go off sick at a supermarket for example, it doesn't take long to train up their replacements. Or divert people from within the company into their roles to keep things going. But that can't be done for train drivers, people who run nuclear power stations, manage water treatment plants, air traffic controllers. All critical to the smooth running of the country, but not "frontline". You can't take the lad who sells tickets at Glasgow Central and ask him to drive the InterCity to London.

@WouldBeGood I'd downloaded the original plan and can't see any changes to proposed timescales?.

Just reading this in the hope of finding out when my 84 yr old father will hear something in Renfrewshire. I live now in north of England and we are starting our over 70s this week. Our local hospital is doing 650 jabs a day and all the GP'S. Parents have heard nothing and they do answer the phone. Looks like the SG response is very poor. My brother's checked the figures and Scotland did get the same proportion of vaccines as England for the top 3 groups.

We could do with an update from Scot Gov as to timelines. While this is a massive job, its a massive job everywhere and other countries in the UK seem to be getting on with it much faster than here.