Scotland’s national clinical director Jason Leitch said the reason for lower vaccination numbers across the UK in recent days was due to supply.
Asked about the UK-wide drop in the number of jabs administered, he told BBC Radio 4’s PM: “It is supply, is what is going on.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon confirms new Covid figures
“I wouldn’t call it a supply problem – it is completely predicted, we knew it would happen. (For) Pfizer in particular, but also AstraZeneca, the supply is lumpy, forgive the expression.
“We don’t get nine million doses on a Tuesday – we get 15,000, then we get 150,000, then 7,500 – so it comes in dribs and drabs, so you have to adapt your demand to that supply.
“And Pfizer made a decision – the right decision – to close a bit of a factory in order to massively upscale their production … so the end product is still coming, the 110 million doses, but they are just coming in a lump over a period of time.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon's new Covid framework
“So we will get back up to those big numbers – we can do 400,000 a week, we just need the supply.”
As of Tuesday morning, 1,465,241 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 43,203 have received their second dose.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel