Chief Medical Officer says vaccine coverage “is improving markedly”

Over 312,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have now been administered across Wales.

Figures released by Public Health Wales yesterday show that 11,798 out of 16,941 (69.6%) care home residents and 25,383 out of 33,359 (76.1%) care home staff have received their first dose of either the Oxford AstraZeneca or Pfizer BioNtech vaccines.

101,905 healthcare staff across Wales have also been vaccinated.

On Tuesday First Minister Mark Drakeford confirmed that the Welsh Government had missed its aim of vaccinating 70% over 80s by the weekend, citing the bad weather as a cause.

At the time of writing 104,567 out of 183,235 (51.7%) over 80s have been vaccinated.

Across North Wales the numbers of vaccines administered is 61,000, with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board expecting to carry out around 33,000 more throughout this week.

Speaking yesterday Chief Medical Officer, Dr Frank Atherton, said that Wales was on track to reach its first milestone of offering all four of the top priority groups a vaccine by mid-February.

The grouping order, which was decided by the UK’s independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), is detailed below:

Dr Atherton said: “We currently have vaccinated, given a first dose of vaccine, to just over 312,000 people here in Wales, that’s a shade under 10% of our total population.

“And that’s been done in a few short weeks. It’s real progress and we are seeing day on day increases in the numbers vaccinated as well as week on week progress as well, so coverage is improving markedly.

“We’re still focusing very much on those priority groups that were outlined by the JCVI and we’re working our way through those to make sure that everybody, particularly those people living in care homes, the most vulnerable and care home workers, frontline healthcare staff are vaccinated as a priority.

“We’re on course to meet the first milestone of offering vaccines to our first priority groups by the middle of February. That was the commitment we made in our vaccination Coronavirus vaccination strategy published just at the start of this month.”

He added that it was too soon to know whether the vaccine stops transmission and urged people to continue to stay at home and follow the lockdown restrictions to keep themselves safe – even a person who has received the vaccine.

The rolling seven day average across Wales is now at 200 per 100,000 – the lowest it has been since early December.

However Dr Atherton reiterated previous messages from the first minister and health minister about any changes to the current lockdown restrictions.

He stated that caution would be taken after cases rose quickly when the initial March lockdown and November firebreak were eased.

Dr Atherton said: “As we do get some more headroom for releasing these measures what we need to do is to release things very cautiously.

“Ministers has been very clear that getting schools back to face to face learning is a very high priority. So that will be one of the things that we aim to do first,

“We need to look at three things really we need to look at the community transmission rates, we need to look at the capacity within the NHS and the to make sure that we don’t get into a position where the NHS is overloaded; and we now need to look, of course, at the percentage of people who are vaccinated who have vaccination cover.”

The first minister will provide an update tomorrow afternoon about any changes to the current lockdown measures after the most recent three week review cabinet meeting.