Vaccine supply key to rapid ramp up of vaccinations in North Wales

The First Minister has said the supply of vaccines “holds the key” to the speed and progress of the vaccination strategy for North Wales.

As we reported earlier today, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board targeting 30,000 first vaccines a week and hoping to rise to a possible 80,000 a week.

The overall latest vaccination figures are out with first doses now at 112,973 across Wales which is +11,603 on the day on day figures.

Health board figures have also been released, however only read up to the week ending the 10th of January so are already several days out of date.

With North Wales having a population of around 700,000 people that rate could mean 24 weeks to get to the full population at the lower vaccination rate, or even 9 weeks for the higher rate.

Earlier today on a Zoom call with the First Minister Mark Drakeford we asked if that was a too simplistic maths for the challenge ahead, or if it was really possible that first doses could be completed in a 3 to 5 month window.

The First Minister explained: “The Health Board is currently planning on a ramping up of the vaccine, so that if we get supplies on the scale they are hoping they will have everything on the ground ready to deliver it.”

“But, this has always been a combination of those two things, having the centres and the workforce ready to deliver it, but then having to supply here as well.”

“The way the supply is working is that we know about two or three weeks ahead exactly how much vaccine we’re going to get, and then we have indicative figure is from the UK Government, for the weeks beyond that.”

“The vaccine itself takes about three months to manufacture, so the vaccines we are getting now are ones that were starting production in well before Christmas. So if we get the volumes of a vaccine that we would like to see, the Health Board will be able to make full use of that in as rapid time scale as possible.

“Neither we and to be fair neither the UK Government can be completely certain of how much, and how quickly, the vaccine supply will ramp up over the weeks ahead.”

We asked if the Welsh Government would be transparent if there are any supply chain issues affecting the vaccination process, regardless of where the issue was.

The First Minister said: “Yes, we will. What we’ve already said is in the very early days because of the rural nature of quite a lot of Wales, we faced some additional challenges with a Pfizer vaccine because of the way it’s got to be stored and the way that it can be delivered.

“As somebody who knows an awful lot more about this than me said to me yesterday, you’ve got to remember with the Pfizer vaccine if you walked upstairs too quickly with it from the ground floor to the first floor, it could be unusable by the time you get to the first floor.

“That vaccine is and has to be stored and used incredibly carefully.

“Our wastage rate at the moment is below 1%. That is telling us something very positive about the way people at the front end of this are making sure that we use every drop of the vaccine that we get. So yes, if there are any glitches in the supply of the vaccine, we will explain what they are and why they happened.”