Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 03 December 2020
As the First Minister said, we will publish a full list of venues as soon as we have confirmed all the venues that are in place across all the health board areas. I expect that we will be able to do that before the Christmas recess—I remind the member that the first priority groups are health and social care workers and care home residents.
I am delighted that the agreements that were reached over lunch time mean that we can take the vaccine to care home residents and to those who are over 80—we will want to be able to take the vaccine to some of them in their own homes, because that is much more person centred for them.
Twenty-three commercial freezers have been purchased, and they are located across all our health board areas, including in island authority areas. I would like to advise members on where they are, but I have to say—although this is not a reason for not doing that—that national security, which is part of MI5, is very unsure about the wisdom of making public where our storage is of what is a very precious vaccine. We continue to talk with it on a four-nation basis because, obviously and evidently, people want to know that their area is covered.
However, I can and will advise members of how many freezers each board area has, so that members can, I hope, see that we are ensuring proper coverage. The freezers are there and are being tested, and they are all of a size that can accommodate the vaccine supplies that we expect as they come through.
On the workforce, my statement made clear the number of whole-time equivalent vaccinators that we will need for the first week or so. We use a model to estimate the number of people within the 2,000 that we will need at various stages in the programme. That is currently being prepared and written so that I can advise Ms Lennon, who asked me a question about it previously. I am happy to ensure that Mr Cameron and the other health spokespeople also see what the model is and therefore how we flex and plan the recruitment of individuals and where we need them to be. That includes how we bring in additional people from the clinical workforce on a sessional basis as and when we need them, as we do with pharmacists, dentists and optometrists.