More than 500 NHS Lothian staff vaccinated - but concerns remain over vaccine supply

More than 500 NHS staff have been vaccinated already in Edinburgh and the Lothians, but health chiefs have warned the vaccine supply is changing ‘day by day’.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

At a meeting of NHS Lothian’s board on Wednesday, December 9, director of primary care transformation David Small gave an update on the roll out of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the area.

Mr Small told the meeting that the ‘controlled start’ of 500 was due to concerns over the availability of large volumes of the vaccine as it is distributed across the UK, and that the vaccination of members of the public will not start until next year.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The health board is also storing some of its vaccine supply in anticipation of vaccinating care home residents in the immediate future, with a plan due to be finalised later this week.

Deputy charge nurse Katie McIntosh administers the first of two Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine jabs to
Clinical Lead of Outpatient Theatres Andrew Mencnarowski, at the Western General Hospital, in Edinburgh. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA WireDeputy charge nurse Katie McIntosh administers the first of two Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine jabs to
Clinical Lead of Outpatient Theatres Andrew Mencnarowski, at the Western General Hospital, in Edinburgh. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire
Deputy charge nurse Katie McIntosh administers the first of two Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine jabs to Clinical Lead of Outpatient Theatres Andrew Mencnarowski, at the Western General Hospital, in Edinburgh. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

Mr Small told the meeting: “As board members will be aware, we started the staff vaccination yesterday, the vaccine arrived in the country on Saturday and was distributed to our vaccine clinics on Tuesday morning.

“We deliberately went for a controlled start yesterday, so we did a total of about 500 people yesterday.

“We have about 4,500 booked up until Christmas. That number will continue to grow, but we are conscious about this because vaccine supply is day by day at the moment - it’s coming in small amounts and being distributed all around the country so we have to be conscious about how far ahead we can commit in terms of the volume of staff vaccination.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“The other thing we have to do is build up a supply and start to vaccinate care home residents, that’s another of the criteria in the chief medical officer’s letter that we received on Friday.

“So we’ve put some of the vaccine, as it comes in, to one side. We’ll have a plan by the end of the week about how we’re going to get to care homes, and that will be based on clear criteria around public health, control of infection, etc., and we’ll be discussing that internally before the end of the week.”

Mr Small also gave an update on the booking system used by NHS Lothian staff to make vaccination appointments, after concerns staff members were struggling to get through to the call centre.

The director said: “In terms of staff booking appointments, we’ve set up a call centre with 30 call handlers, it has been extremely busy as you can imagine, and there has been a degree of frustration in the system about not being able to get through.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“That will improve, and we’ve taken on improvements around the operating of the call centre to improve that process but there are still long queues, and the fact that we already have 4,500 people are booked means they are getting through.

“When we come to the public vaccination part of the programme in the new year, it will be a largely online booking system at a national level.”

Joseph Anderson, Local Democracy Reporter

A message from the Editor: Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.