COVID-19 vaccinations

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly infectious respiratory infection, first identified in late 2019. It can spread quickly and cause serious illness, hospitalisation and death.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines have been approved for use by the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and vaccinations have now begun.

NHS Inform provides information for the public on COVID-19 vaccinations (external website)

Eligible groups for COVID-19 vaccination

NHS Scotland will follow the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advice and vaccinate those most at risk first, and those who work closest with them.
JCVI advises the order of priority for the COVID-19 vaccination is:

1. residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
2. all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
3. all those 75 years of age and over
4. all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals
5. all those 65 years of age and over
6. all individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality
7. all those 60 years of age and over
8. all those 55 years of age and over
9. all those 50 years of age and over

Further information about JCVI advice on priority groups for the COVID-19 vaccination on GOV.UK.

COVID-19 vaccine resources

We have produced resources to support the COVID-19 vaccination programme. 

View the COVID-19 vaccine resources

Care home resources

We have produced resources to promote the COVID-19 vaccinations for adults and workers in care homes. These include:

• information for adults
• leaflet for workers
• email invitation text

View the care home COVID-19 vaccine resources

Healthcare workers resources

We have produced resources to support COVID-19 vaccinations for frontline healthcare worker staff. These include:

• leaflet
• poster
• email invitation text
• suggested social media wording
• social media assets

View the healthcare worker COVID-19 vaccine resources

Social care workers resources

We have produced resources to promote the COVID-19 vaccinations for social care worker staff. These include:

• leaflet
• poster
• email invitation text
• suggested social media wording
• social media assets

View the social care worker COVID-19 vaccine resources

GP resources

We have produced a range of resources to help GP surgeries support eligible groups as part of the vaccination rollout. These include:

• information for adults
• information for healthcare workers
• information for social care workers
• invitation letter text

View the GP COVID-19 vaccine resources

COVID-19 vaccine surveillance

As the COVID-19 vaccine programme progresses, it is important to monitor and evaluate the vaccines against a broad range of outcomes. This will help to maintain public and healthcare professionals' confidence in the vaccines. It will also ensure that surveillance systems are in place for long-term monitoring of the programme and the impact it has.

We are leading a broad range of surveillance work to do this in Scotland. We are working collaboratively with the MHRA, NHS Scotland, Scottish Government and academic partners to do this.

The work will:

• monitor uptake and coverage of the vaccine in targeted populations and identify under-vaccinated groups
• rapidly detect and evaluate possible adverse events associated with the COVID-19 Vaccination
• estimate the effectiveness of the vaccine at preventing disease (including the effectiveness of preventing different variants and on the duration of any protective effect)
• identify risk factors for and outcomes of vaccine effect and failure
• monitor the impact on the prevalence of antibodies against COVID-19 as an indicator of population-level immunity
• monitor attitudes to vaccination and identify barriers to vaccine uptake
• monitor inequalities across various outcome measures.

More detail about our approach to the surveillance of COVID-19 vaccinations is provided in COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Strategy.

View the COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Strategy

The outcomes of the various aspects of the surveillance programme will be reported as they become available.