Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 02 March 2021
I will certainly look into the claim that there is a particular problem in Lothian. Directors of education have been asked to identify staff who fall into that category, so that they can be vaccinated as quickly as possible. I say to members across the chamber that, if there are particular issues in particular parts of the country, they should make us aware of them so that we can immediately get on to them and try to resolve them. I will come back to Alison Johnstone on that point, or ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport to do so.
More broadly, we are following the advice and recommendations of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. That is the right and only thing to do. While supplies of the vaccine are still constrained to some extent, we have to make choices about who gets vaccinated and following the expert advice is the right way to make those choices. We are following the initial prioritisation plan which, as I have said before, we will work to do as quickly as possible. Then we will move into the rest of the population, which the JCVI recommends should continue to be done on an age basis, and teachers will be done in line with that priority.
Many teachers will already have been vaccinated if they fall into one of the categories that have already had priority; many will be being vaccinated right now, because they fall within the category of people with underlying health conditions; and we are working to do everybody over the age of 50 by mid-April. I know that that is not every teacher, but we will then move down the age range to have everybody in the adult population vaccinated by the end of July. As soon as we start to depart from the expert advice, we start to make choices that are political, not expert driven. Given the importance and sensitivity of the matter, it is important that we stick to the clinical advice.