An apology has been issued to Fife politicians after thousands of Covid-19 vaccine appointments were incorrectly booked – leading to elderly and vulnerable patients waiting for hours in the cold.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman has written to all of the regions MSPs and MPs after around 7,000 vaccine appointments were wrongly scheduled due to a IT glitch.
Ms Freeman has admitted the situation earlier this week was “unacceptable” and “far below my expectations of the vaccine programme”, following on from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s own apology in the Scottish Parliament.
It is understood eight clinics were overbooked from Monday to Friday this week and this coming Monday, while a single clinic was affected on February 13 and 14.
Ms Freeman also apologised at Holyrood on Tuesday.
Letters have now gone out by first class mail to reschedule appointments for Thursday, Friday and Monday, while extra vaccinators and the Scottish Ambulance Service have been drafted in to increase capacity at many of the centres were lengthy queues were experienced earlier this week.
Despite the apologies, however, North East Fife MP Wendy Chamberlain and MSP Willie Rennie have criticised the Scottish Government’s insistence that “nothing has gone wrong” over the rollout of the vaccine.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Mr Rennie said: “The First Minister’s proclamation that nothing has gone wrong will seem utterly far-fetched to my elderly and vulnerable constituents who queued in sub-zero conditions for hours on end for an injection that would only take minutes.
“That 7,000 appointments were affected is bad enough, that they still don’t know what went wrong is even worse.
“Such a large error should have been spotted before elderly people turned up for their appointments.
“Not only are we still way behind England but we are now inviting people for appointments that don’t even exist.
“The thousands of excellent vaccinators are being let down by a creaking system established by a government oblivious to the problems.”
Ms Chamberlain added: “The government have had more than enough time to prepare for the vaccine roll out.
“It is right that the Cabinet Secretary has now apologised, but this was entirely avoidable.
“Many of my constituents, elderly and vulnerable, were left outside in the cold waiting for the vaccine for a respiratory virus. This is simply unacceptable.
“The country’s patience for a slow and troublesome vaccine roll out is wearing thin and the government must get a grasp of this, not with small fixes but system change to ensure these mistakes don’t happen again.”
Ms Freeman stressed that ServiceNow, the national scheduling system, are implementing a technical change by the end of the week to ensure a repeat of the chaos seen this week can’t occur.
“Until then, we have updated our standard operating procedures,” she said.
“While NHS National Services Scotland, NHS Fife and the Scottish Government have worked quickly to resolve this problem, the situation has caused unacceptable delays and disappointment for people in Fife and others will face some disruption in the coming days as their appointments are rescheduled.
“I therefore want to extend my apologies once again.”
