ALL Scots over the age of 50 will receive the Covid-19 vaccine by the spring after the "game-changing" Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by regulators and will be rolled out from Monday.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses of the newly-approved vaccine – enough to protect 50 million people of which Scotland will receive 8.2 per cent, based on its population.
Around 40,000 doses are expected to arrive in Scotland next week.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed that it will now be possible to vaccinate "every adult in the UK with both doses" and that "everybody who wants one can get a vaccine".
Mr Hancock added that "people get protection after the first dose" meaning it is now possible to "accelerate the speed" that the first dose is rolled out.
As of Sunday, more than 92,000 people in Scotland had already received their first shot of the Pfizer vaccine, already approved by UK regulators. But Nicola Sturgeon said the new vaccine “means that more people will get their first dose of a Covid vaccine much sooner than originally anticipated”.
Experts have now advised that the two doses of both vaccines can be given up to 12 weeks apart, speeding up the rollout of the first shot to more people.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine approved for use in UK
From Monday, the new jags will be administered in locations where the Pfizer vaccines are being given but from January 11, some Scots on the priority list will be able to have the shot in their local community.
Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman stressed that “the priority list remains the same” amid the emergence of the second approved vaccine.
She said the AstraZeneca vaccine “doesn’t have some of the challenges” that the first approved vaccine does, which has so far limited its distribution.
Ms Freeman added: “We don’t have to store it in such low temperatures so it can be stored in a fridge in a GP practice, for example.
“It can be easily transported and it comes in smaller pack sizes – which is one of the issues we had to overcome with Pfizer to get it into care homes.
“It makes it easier for us to do and it makes it more accessible to all the people that we want to be vaccinated.”
The AstraZeneca vaccine will be prioritised, giving more people on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) phase 1 priority list a first dose – with second doses being administered within 12 weeks, meaning more people can receive a first dose quickly which offers some protection from the virus.
Ms Freeman indicated that the approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine means everyone over 50 and those in certain vulnerable groups will have received the vaccine by the spring.
She said: “We’re continuing our plan to have completed our whole JCVI list which is basically everyone over 50, including people who may be under 50 but have clinical conditions, unpaid carers as well.
“Our overall plan to complete that group in the spring was on the presumption that we would get the AstraZeneca vaccine – so we’re on track to do that and we will do it as fast as supplies come through to us.”
Professor Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at Edinburgh University and a Scottish Government adviser on the pandemic, said that politicians “are putting are all their eggs into the vaccine basket and doing everything they can to roll this out as quickly as possible”.
She added: “The challenge we have now is that the health services are already strained because of the winter and the number of Covid patients they're seeing. So it's how do you support that through more innovative chains of getting it out.
"We are the first country to approve this vaccine, we're speeding ahead with it. We have to just keep going."
Andrew Hayward, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at University College London, described the approval of the second vaccine as a “game-changer”.
READ MORE: Hancock: life could return to normal by spring thanks to approval of Oxford vaccine
Mr Hayward, a member of the UK Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), added” “It’s exactly what we need right now.
“We’re facing an extraordinarily difficult situation with a step change in the transmissibility of the virus, which means we need a step change in our response.
“I think essentially what this has turned this into is a race between us and the virus, and we need to slow the virus down as much as we can whilst we get as many people vaccinated as possible.”
Dr June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), said her team of scientists and clinicians had “very carefully and methodically and rigorously reviewed all the data on safety, on effectiveness, and on quality” relating to the vaccine.
She added: “No corners, whatsoever, have been cut.
“The safety of the public always comes first.”
Data published in The Lancet medical journal in early December showed the vaccine was 62% effective in preventing Covid-19 when given as two full doses, but also appeared to prevent any severe disease.
The MHRA said the vaccine was up to 80% effective when there was a three-month interval between the first and second doses, according to further data that has yet to be published in a medical journal.
A first dose of the jab gives 73% effectiveness from three weeks after immunisation until a second dose at 12 weeks, according to the MHRA and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
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