Still no clarity on whether target to vaccinate 70% of over 80s in Wales by weekend was met

Wales’ Health Minister has said it will be another “day or two” before it is clear whether a target to vaccinate the majority of care home residents and over 80s by the weekend, had been met.

So far 270,833 people – around 8.7% of the adult population across Wales – has received a first dose of either the Pfizer BioNtech or Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine.

Speaking at a Plenary session last Tuesday, Vaughan Gething said that he expected that 70% of the over-80s would be vaccinated by yesterday and that it was his understanding that the “majority” had already received a vaccine.

However, the release of figures by Public Health Wales the day after showed that this was not the case.

First Minister Mark Drakeford later said that there “was a lag” between the data seen daily by ministers and the information made available to the public everyday and collating official accurate figures takes time.

New figures released today show that just over 48% (88,005) of the over 80s and 66.2% (11,144) care home residents have been received their first dose of the vaccine.

At today’s Welsh Government press conference Mr Gething said that it would be another day or two before data from over the weekend filtered through to confirm whether the target was met.

He said: “We don’t have all the data back from the vaccination centers and GP practice around Wales to say whether we have reached the 70% figure.

“A massive amount of work was done last week and of course over the weekend. The number of people vaccinated increased every day as the week progressed.

“We will know in the next day or two if we reached the 70% figure. We do know that more than 70% of care home workers have been vaccinated.”

Pressed on whether the Welsh Government had actually missed the target, Mr Gething repeated that a lag meant the data was not yet available.

However Angela Burns MS, shadow health minister, said that that the delay in vaccination target data “is unhelpful and does nothing to reassure people in Wales.”

Mrs Burns said: “I think we can all accept that the snow and ice that affected large parts of Wales yesterday will likely have had a knock-on effect with the numbers of vaccinations that took place, but these delays in reporting don’t allow us to see how the targets are being met.

“And I want to be completely clear that we want them to be reached, we want them to be beaten, we want them to be exceeded – but these bugs in the system that cause lags in data must be ironed out.

“Then, when we have accurate and up-to-date data, can we and everyone else in Wales have some reassurance that the programme is running effectively, because this wait-and-see approach offers none.”