Covid vaccine is safe and return to normal life depends upon it – John McLellan

Moving on is not just an abstract sense of time this Hogmanay but a real moment of change.

It cannot be underestimated how vital the AstraZeneca vaccine announcement is to the end of the Covid-19 nightmare, with the UK government having already secured 100 million doses of an inoculation which beats the rivals hands down because it does not need sub-Arctic freezers for its storage and transportation, and with a smaller amount required for the second dose it goes much further.

The UK government saw the potential and secured the supplies, while the UK drug approval system made sure it was available before the new year. Dismissed in Scotland as hapless Matt Hancock and bumbling Boris Johnson, they have ensured Scotland will have plentiful stocks of the best vaccine which could have the whole population immunised by the summer. Normality beckons.

There is a proliferation of online quizzes to see when your appointment is likely, and one of the few advantages of getting on is that the predicted date of vaccine jag, VJ-Day if you like, is reassuringly near. For me it was the end of February. If true... yay.

But optimism rests with a fast roll-out, and as health is fully devolved the baton is now firmly with the Scottish government. The Scottish NHS is ultimately controlled by the First Minister, a former health minister, and having taken personal command of this crisis from the start, the onus is on her to ensure efficient distribution. There’s no use having millions of doses piling up in NHS stores if there isn’t the qualified personnel to get it out and there have been months to plan for this moment.

This winter’s outdoors flu jag programme was interrupted by relatively mild weather, but with the whole population to be seen, there is no capacity for delay because the economy and nation’s well-being depend on it.

With predictions that 40 million Oxford vaccine doses could be available in the UK by March, on a per-capita basis that could be about 3.6 million for Scotland, meaning everyone over 65 and every NHS employee should have the necessary double dose before Easter, and there would still be well over half a million left for the rest of the population.

That of course presumes that everyone is desperate to get immunised and a recent UK-wide survey of 17,000 people showed one in 12 would refuse and anti-vaxx propaganda is reaching millions of others who still have second thoughts.

Edinburgh was predictably at the sensible end of the spectrum, with 59 per cent saying they would have it, but that still leaves 41 per cent with doubts.

So-called herd immunity needs the vast majority of us to be immunised and whether conspiracy fear or phobia, it still leaves an astonishing number of people who are prepared to put their own lives and the health service at risk. The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers might make different arguments to the purely fearful, but it’s still a lot of people potentially standing between success and failure.

The message is simple. The vaccine is safe and normal life depends on it. Get with the programme, people.

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