New statistics from Public Health Scotland lay bare the challenges in rolling out the vaccination programme amongst some communities.
The report provides new data showing the levels of vaccination uptake by ethnicity and poverty levels. The report covers vaccinations from the start of the rollout to September 2021.
Poverty gap
Across the Scottish health boards, Tayside shows the largest gap between the most and least deprived – a gap of 16.7%. Within Tayside, 91% of people who live in the least-deprived areas had received a first dose, compared with 74.3% in the most-deprived.
The measurement of poverty used in the report is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) which ranks areas of Scotland based on a range of factors from health to education levels, income and access to services.
Areas are assigned a rank and also banded within ten groups called deciles. Within the deciles all of the areas in group one are the ‘most-deprived’ areas and ten is ‘least-deprived’.
A spokesperson for NHS Tayside said: “Across Tayside our vaccination teams have delivered a phenomenal 633,000 jabs.
“That’s 91% of over 16s who have had their first dose and 84% receiving two doses.
“From a standing start, only 10 months ago, this is a very significant achievement.
“Over the course of the vaccination programme to date, the teams have been out and about in communities delivering vaccinations to different groups of people in an effort to take the vaccinators out nearer to where people live, work and gather.
“These outreach clinics have popped up in farms and factories, homeless units and hostels, football stadia, religious centres, supermarkets and local community centres.
“They have also been supported by NHS Tayside’s Interpretation and Translation Service and travel support is also available to get to our vaccination clinics.
“Of course we want everyone in Tayside to come forward for their jab and so we are continuing to run drop-in clinics throughout Tayside to make it as easy as possible for people to get vaccinated.”
In comparison to Tayside, Fife is the only Scottish board to have no disparity between richest and poorest with both groups showing a 76.9% uptake in first doses.
Across Scotland, the 40-49 age demographic showed the largest disparity from most to least deprived with a 10.3% gap.
What about ethnicity?
The report also shed some light on vaccination levels by ethnic group which showed that the white Polish community in Scotland had the lowest first dose uptake rate at less than 50%.
The rate amongst this community is low across all Scottish health boards but particularly in the larger boards such as Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Lanarkshire.
More from the DCT data team
- Covid vaccine in Scotland: Track the rollout progress with these charts
- Coronavirus in Scotland – track the spread with these charts
- Data: Proportion of non-UK born Dundee residents increases in 2020