COVID-19 vaccination deployment plan details: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the process of immunising the population against Covid-19, including 24 hour immunisation operation, and the targeted number of immunisations per hour.

Response

We are working as fast as supplies allow to vaccinate everyone over the age of 18 and those aged 16 and 17 who are frontline health and social care workers, young carers or have underlying health conditions in Scotland – 4.5 million people.

With regard to targets, we are exceeding our target of 100,000 vaccinations per week in January and this is increasing to a target of 400,000 vaccinations per week in February.

We do not hold data based on hourly targets.

Our planning assumptions to determine the workforce requirement for the vaccination programme are set at 7 minutes per vaccine with 330 productive minutes a day (i.e. 47 vaccinations per vaccinator per day). This is a conservative estimate of productivity, to ensure that Health Boards employ the staff required to deliver the programme, and that we are not constrained by the availability of workforce. It is based on information from our clinical review group.

The rate of programme delivery has been set with reference to supply schedules.

We have asked health boards to have 1700 Whole Time Equivalent vaccinators (37.5hr a week) in place by the end of February, with the modelled capacity to deliver c. 400,000 doses per week. This is subject to vaccine supply, which is likely to limit the rate at which we can deliver vaccinations.

We understand to increase the rate of vaccinations, it is sensible to roster people at times that are convenient to the public. Therefore we are increasing capacity within vaccination centres during the day, and we will be trialling a 24 hour delivery approach to determine if this would be welcome. We have been aware of the range of cohorts we have been prioritising to date – and we are aware that it would not be welcome to, for example, send a 80 year old an appointment for the middle of the night. Therefore, the 24 hour option becomes more welcome and palatable when we reach the younger population when self-booking digitally will be the option rather than scheduled letters.

More information on our vaccine deployment plan and key milestones can be found in our recent publication, “COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment Plan 2021” available at: COVID-19+vaccine+deployment+plan+14+January+2021.pdf (www.gov.scot)

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