THE ADVERSE weather conditions which forced vaccination centres to close across Wales this weekend will not affect vaccination targets, health minister Vaughan Gething has said.

Mr Gething said he was confident Wales had the ability to catch up for the two-day lull in the number of vaccinations administered, and should meet its target of offering a vaccine to everyone in the top four priority groups by mid-February – providing there are no further periods of bad weather.

The latest Public Health Wales figures show 270,833 people have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine – meaning 6,295 people received the jab in the 24 hours covered by the figures. This is down from almost 24,000 in the 24 hours covered by Sunday’s figures and more than 28,000 the day before. The figures for the number of vaccinations which took place on Sunday – when Aneurin Bevan University Health Board closed down vaccination centres after snow blanketed the region - are yet to be released.

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“In the delivery, I think most people will understand if you have weather like we saw in many parts of Wales, it simply prevents you from doing so, it may take a little more time,” said Mr Gething.

“However, I think we'll catch up this week from what we lost in terms of activity over this weekend, so I think you'll see very high figures at the end of this week from what our fantastic NHS Wales led teams are able to achieve.

“If there are a significant number of additional interruptions, that may affect what we're able to do, but I think we were to catch up this week and still be on track to achieve all four priority groups by the middle of February.”

Mr Gething said the Welsh vaccination programme had made “significant gains” over the past week and was confident the system was in place to continue to scale up the number of doses administered, as long as the supply was there.

“I think we are on track and the three to four days of significant gains being made of more than 20,000 people being vaccinated on each day is what we can do on a regular basis if we have the supply,” he said.

“I do think we're able to do north of 140,000 each week on a regular basis and we're expecting more supply to come in to enable us to do more.

“From the pace we have seen in the second half of last week, it’s a marker of exactly what I said would be possible: a significant step up in the pace and scale of our delivery and the ability to do so on a regular basis thanks to our fantastic NHS Wales led vaccination programme here in Wales and I hope people really are proud.”