Vaccination targets

[RaspberryCoulis]

I might be missing something here (but I doubt it). So the most wonderful Travelling Tabby site has started to break down vaccinations by age group and location.

www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

About half way down the page. Look at the percentage vaccinated in the health and social care sector - 123%. That's right. We've vaccinated more people than there actually are.

Except we haven't, because they pulled the figure of how many health and social care staff out of thin air, or calculated it on the back of a fag packet.

230,000? Sounds about right Jeanne, off you pop and get them vaccinated. Then we can stand up at the daily briefing and give the percentage of the made up number we've vaccinated, even though the made up number was clearly wrong in the first place because we've vaccinated over 100% which is obviously impossible.

So really, we have no idea what percentage of any group has been vaccinated because they didn't have accurate figures to start with.

What a shower of utter incompetents. And thank goodness for Travelling Tabby. A student showing the Scot Gov how it should be done.

Is not because extra people have been taken on to cover the huge amount of covid related absences?

Could it be people who have received the second dose? As I know there were some booked before the government decided to change the vaccine interval.

Yes NHS Lothian started 2nd doses this week but would hope they're being calculated differently!

I expect the calculation of nhs staff eligible for vaccine is bit of a back of a fag packet. Easiest way for Gov to get numbers is to add number of clinical staff in every health board together. So that's your nurses, doctors, radiographers, physios, midwives etc.

However in NHS Lothian all "close patient facing" staff have been vaccinated, so that includes porters, clinic receptionist, chaplains etc who come into contact with dozens patients every day but not in clinical way.
May explain the discrepancy.

I also know some students coming into hospitals on placement have been getting vaccinated and they will get counted in NHS numbers , not their university.

They've also vaccinated over 100% of those in care homes. Except when you look at their figure for how many people are in care homes it's a nice round 30,000 as it's an estimated number. Need to take them with a pinch of salt.

What @Sootess said. Plus there are health and social care staff that are not directly employed by the NHS (example such as pharmacists and pharmacy staff) such that an exact number would have been difficult to ascertain.

They’ve repeatedly said on all the briefings that the uptake is higher than they anticipated.

Yes the vaccine programme started off too slowly and they absolutely need to keep up momentum now and get people their second doses but I’d say more people vaccinated than was estimated is a great news story...

I think there have been lots of stuff going about re the figures and why the are inaccurate. Some things can't be helped and are no-ones fault. Things such as people dying, moving from and to different categories, in or out of care homes, having birthdays, being recruited to NHS or carer, retiring, coming back, leaving etc etc so the figures do fluctuate and as you say were a rounded best estimate at the beginning anyway.

There have also been some reports of inaccurate data collection and manipulation/misrepresentation