In a series of exchanges on Twitter today, the former BBC man revealed just how far behind Wales and Scotland were lagging in terms of their own vaccination programmes. While Boris Johnson’s programme has surged ahead, both Wales and Scotland have struggled to roll out the drugs across the nation. In a graph produced by Our World in Data, Mr Neil illustrated England’s success in distributing the vaccine to the nation.
In the graph, England is recording a vaccination rate of 0.41 people per 100,000 as of January 16.
In contrast, Wales and Scotland were reporting rates of 0.21 and 0.18 respectively.
Not only has England’s progress continued to rise at a fast rate, but both Scotland and Wales have also seen rates drop since January 14 – they had been 0.22 and 0.25 at the time respectively.
Wales’ First Minister faced intense criticism after it emerged the government was slowing down its distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine.
He told the Today programme: “There will be no point, and certainly it will be logistically very damaging to try to use all of that in the first week and then to have all our vaccinators standing around with nothing to do for another month.
“The sensible thing to do is to use the vaccine you’ve got over the period that you’ve got it for so that your system can absorb it, they can go on working, that you don’t have people standing around with nothing to do.”
The Welsh Government has stated it is spacing out vaccines in order not to run out of supply.
The Welsh Government has revealed 151,737 doses of the vaccine have now been administered of the 327,000 delivered.
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Scotland hopes to have vaccinated those over 80, frontline health staff and care home resident and their carers, by the start of next month.
In contrast, Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi has revealed 50 percent of care home resident will have been vaccinated by the end of today.
Scottish Labour interim leader, Jackie Baillie has called on the Government to step up the supply of the drug.
She also expects both the UK and Scottish Government to work together on the rollout of the drug.
She said: “The vaccine programme needs to be the government’s number one priority at the moment.
“We know we are in a race against time with the virus.”
The Lib Dems north of the border have also criticised the Government for the distribution of the drug.
Their leader, Willie Rennie said it was unacceptable that more doses were not in the hands of GPs.
