On 22 January 2021, BBC UK had a special report on the anxiety in English and Welsh care homes that they were being left behind in the vaccine rollout. They had the above graphic and the percentages showed Scotland to be well ahead on the curve.
Days earlier, in response to a question by Philippa Whitford, Matt Hancock confirmed that only 24% of care home residents in England had been vaccinated. On the same day, the First Minister of Scotland indicated that 80% of care home residents and staff had now been vaccinated. Some councils, Inverclyde and North Ayrshire claimed 100%. Whitford then explained:
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was very clear that those who live in care homes were the top priority for vaccination against covid-19. Due to integration of health and social care, Scottish health boards were able to deliver the Pfizer vaccine into care homes in December, and well over 70% of such residents have already been vaccinated across Scotland. In my own health board, the phase is almost complete. So can the Minister explain why in England care home residents were not the first cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine in December, and as only a quarter have received their first dose, when does he expect all such residents to have been vaccinated?
BBC Scotland today, is returning to the issue in the context of Police Scotland delays in pursuing prosecutions of those responsible for some deaths, especially those in care homes.
You won’t be hearing any of the above or this, below.
The comparative data below reveals the success of Health Secretary Jeanne Freeman in getting vaccines into care homes without the delay allowed in England:
The above graph revealing starkly the cost in lives of the failure in England to fully implement the JCVI guidance and vaccinate care home residents before all other groups was compiled by Na Sirf Musiqi https://twitter.com/nasirfmusiqi from official sources.
It’s a story never told on MSM.
This shows the impact of the vaccinations as they began to confer immunity on many in Scottish care homes from the middle of January 2021:
Starting on 14th December 2020, care home residents and staff in Scotland were the first to receive the Covid vaccine. Only 5 days later, 90% of care home residents had received their first dose of vaccine. A number of health boards had by then given the first dose of vaccine to 100% of their care home residents.
The Scottish Government followed the JCVI advice on this and the vaccinator teams achieved this despite logistical problems with the Pfizer vaccine which NHS England used as an excuse to delay care home vaccinations and to rattle up the vaccination statistics of those fit to attend centres. At the time the UK Government used these data to claim Scotland was lagging behind.
The excellent MSM_Monitor had beaten me to the punch on the necessary calculations so, lazily, here are his/her data:
Inserting my own arithmetic oar here and noting that the population of England is 10 times greater, it looks like the death rate in care homes was about the same in the first three weeks but by early January the rate in England had doubled and is now approaching three times the rate in Scotland.
What was the scale of avoidable death in English care homes?
NHS Scotland found a way to get the Pfizer vaccine into care homes from mid-December 2020. The consequences for England’s care homes of not doing the same were horrific:
From the 1st of January 2021 until the 26th February, 9 088 care home residents in England died from confirmed Covid-19.
From the 1st of January 2021 until the 28th February, 532 care home residents in Scotland died from confirmed Covid-19.
England has ten times the population so pro-rata might have been expected to have ten times as many deaths, 5 320, but had around 3 700 more.
Had NHS England, followed the JCVI advice and vaccinated care home residents as a priority above all others, 3 700 lives might have been saved.
Who told them not to follow the JCVI advice? Who told NHS Scotland to follow it?
We know. Will the UK media tell everyone else?
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 
Plus , some of the Covid deaths in Scottish Care Homes were the direct result of private Care Facilities importing cheap labour from England to staff Scottish Care Homes – with no attempt to screen these same staff for infection !
LikeLiked by 1 person
And the care home owners, backed by the thuggish GMB union, were platformed by the media to attack the Scottish Government over what they claimed was lack of support.
Council run care homes and smaller care homes in general had very low rates of infection and fatalities. The infections and fatalities were in the large and privately owned care homes. The vectors of infection were care staff drafted in, unscreened, and often for short periods, from private home companies in England.
The media gloated over the infection rate at a large privately run care home in Skye, but did not make comparison with the smaller Council-run church-run homes in Skye where infection levels were low.
LikeLike
Hi Alasdair. I think I remember that care home in Skye had to be taken under direct Scottish Goverment control due to its terrible record.
As for the rest of your post – you saved me the bother of replicating it. Totally correct – Our Government would brief the plans and explain the intent at lunchtime and, following the purile press questions, the BBC would roll out hospitality owners and care home reps to complain and undermine the situation. Some hotel owner down the A74 was always on as was one particuler owner of several carte homes.
LikeLiked by 1 person