Our Man In Holyrood: Working together is the key to beating the virus
ALL of us must work together to temper the lethal force of the Covid-19 pandemic in every way that we can, and that is what we are all trying to do, writes Fergus Ewing MSP.
Matt Hancock the Tory health minister, speaking last week on the vaccination rollout on UK television, said: “We are getting it in as quickly as we can from the two manufacturers.
“The NHS, across the whole of the UK, is supplying it and getting it into people’s arms as quickly as it comes in.”
It is simply to be regretted that the Tories in Scotland are not saying this too.
For they, like their colleagues south of the border, should be paying tribute to all those who are involved in the monumental task of ensuring that every citizen who wants the vaccine can receive it in a well-ordered and carefully planned, risk-based programme – a programme which is being treated by all four governments of the UK as a matter of the greatest urgency, and which is being delivered with skill and dedication by the NHS.
No one is saying that a programme of this size in any country – Scotland or anywhere else – will be delivered without difficulty.
Mass vaccination centres are up and running in a number of places, and are being joined rapidly by others.
Rural and island boards are looking at innovative ways of vaccinating whole communities.
There can and should be scrutiny and suggestion from across the chamber, but there should not be a desperate politicisation by an unprincipled Tory party here.
The University of the Highlands and Islands is supporting NHS Highland’s efforts to vaccinate all frontline health and social care staff.
The university has opened its Centre for Health Science building in Inverness as a Covid-19 vaccination hub for NHS workers.
The hub will operate seven days a week to ensure health and social care staff can be vaccinated as efficiently as possible.
Meanwhile, sadly, the pandemic is not the only issue that the country has to deal with.
The UK Tory insistence, backed by the Scottish Tories, on a reckless decision to press on with the end of the transition period for leaving the EU is causing untold economic and social damage.
These problems are multiplying.
The UK government calls those teething troubles and tries to pin the blame on anybody but itself, but the truth is that the hard Brexit it chose has produced a hard outcome that will be permanent.
- Fergus Ewing is MSP for Inverness and Nairn.
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