VACCINE centres across Scotland may have to cut their opening hours as the number of Covid jags available in the coming week falls by around half.

Nicola Sturgeon today said it was “unlikely” that even 30,000 first and second doses combined would be administered each day this week, after several days of more than 60,000 first doses alone last week.

She said the mass vaccination centre at the NHS Lousia Jordan in Glasgow could move from seven-day opening to five days per week, as could other centres.

The First Minister said it was a combination of Pfizer restructuring its delivery pattern, higher than expected uptake of vaccines and the need to give second doses.

Last week, Ms Sturgeon said the Government expected supplies coming to Scotland to “slightly dip” in the second half of February as part of a UK-wide phenomenon.

However today she confirmed the numbers could be around half that of last week.

She said: “The NHS Louisa Jordan may, over the next week or two, go from seven days a week to five days to reflect the dip in supplies. It may be that other centres do likewise.

“But we’re not talking here about closing vaccination centres.

“What we have here are three factors coming together for the next couple of weeks.

“Firstly, we’ve vaccinated more people than we had anticipated by this stage because of the higher uptake, so we have used more vaccine than we initially predicted we would.

“Secondly, Pfizer has re-phased its delivery of supplies. We’re expecting to get the same amount of supply over the period to the end of March but it will be slightly different phasing.

“Less over the next couple of weeks than we anticipated.

“The third factor is that we are getting close to starting to having to do second doses for those who were vaccinated early on in the programme. So we’re at the stage where we have to reserve stocks so we’ve got enough to do the second doses as they fall due.

“The combination of these factors mean, just for a short period, the supplies that we have will be a bit more constrained than we originally thought and we will have to flex the programme to reflect that.

“So the kind of daily figures we have been reporting over the last week or so, where it was above 60,000 on some days, if I lookover this week and maybe into next week, I would doubt that we would get to those daily levels, probably around 30,000 a day, and that is just about using the supply that we’ve got appropriately.

“When supply begins to increase again we will be in a position to very rapidly .. so the Louise Jordan will immediately go back from five days to seven days. We’re going to see these issues throughout this programme. That’s in the nature of it.

“But we’re in a much better position than we thought we were going top be. We’ve vaccinated more people than we anticipated, so that’s a good thing, and we now have to manage supplies top make sure we can second doses done, and then get the first doses as quickly as possible to the remainder of the population.”

She later confirmed the 30,000 doses a day figure covered both first and second doses, but was unable to give a breakdown into the two categories.

News of the temporary slowdown was offset by more positive figures on rollout.

Ms Sturgeon said the Government was confident of hitting its target to vaccinate all those over 70 and the clinically extremely vulnerable by mid-February,

She said uptake had been “significantly beyond” the 80 per cent envisaged, with “pretty much everybody” in care homes for older people having had their first dose.

She said coverage was “close to 100%” of those over 80 in the community, although she admitted there could be a handful who had “slipped through the cracks” for reasons such as changes of address.

In addition, more than 99% of those aged 75 to 79 and 85% of the 70 to 74 age group had been given their jag or were due to get it today.

More than half (53%) of those in the next priority group, aged 65 to 69, had also had a jag.

She said: “Today, mid-February, is the final day of the period during which we said we would have offered the vaccine to everyone over 70 and everyone who has an extreme clinical vulnerability,” Ms Sturgeon said.

“We will report today’s numbers tomorrow but I can say now that we are satisfied that we have met that target. Everyone in these groups has been offered the vaccine.”