Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued an apology on Tuesday after vaccination clinics in Fife saw a system error that led to double bookings the previous day.
Following reports of long queues outside clinics on Monday, Sturgeon said that the transferring of the system had caused “double bookings” and appointment slots left unnecessary queueing. She added that poor weather led to the situation becoming “particularly regrettable”.
“Yesterday there was a particular problem in Fife because it was migrating on to the Service Now platform that I’ve been speaking about that all mainland health boards are going to be on by the end of this week, and that led to a bit of a re-booking issue”, Ms Sturgeon said.
My dad's vaccine appointment was for 3.53pm this afternoon at the Templehall Community Centre in Kirkcaldy – two hours later there's still a queue like this outside, expected to last another hour. Lining up vulnerable people on a freezing day... what's going on? https://t.co/y1nCBlnt7m
— Steven MacKenzie (@stevenmackenzie) February 8, 2021
Ms Sturgeon continued saying that she doesn’t “expect people not to feel annoyed when these things happen because ideally they shouldn't happen and that's why an apology is right”.
"But I would ask everybody to just bear in mind how hard health boards are working right now to get this programme delivered as quickly as possible.”
The first minister said that staff would be looking to re-book appointments as quickly as possible and while she did not give precise dates, she expressed confidence that those who were not vaccinated on Monday will be soon.
“There will be glitches, unfortunately in any system like this, but we try to minimise that, and right now, we will be having a bit of disruption because of the weather, some things are beyond our control but we are trying to get people done as quickly as possible”, she said, urging people to be patient.
Kirkcaldy, Levenmouth, Glenrothes and Lochgelly also had reports of hundreds of elderly people arriving for vaccination appointments only to be met with similar issues.
