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We are preparing a plan for that. We have learned a great deal during the pandemic about how to do that in a way that does not impact on the rest of the NHS. Most NHS boards have built up vaccination teams and vaccination plans. Over the past year or two, given how vaccines are now being delivered, people are finding that different vaccines are being done at different rates and in different places. For example, people are getting their flu vaccine in a different way—that has moved largely out of general practices and into health board centres.

We are absolutely aware of the challenge for the teams on the ground. I am a pharmacist by profession. If I think back to the course of the pandemic, we did not even know what the virus was when we were hit by it. In a year, we had a vaccine. I looked at that vaccine and thought, “Oh, my goodness, it comes in a multidose vial. It needs to be reconstituted and—good grief!—it needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees. How on earth will we manage that logistically? How will we get that into people’s arms?”

That complexity has continued to evolve. We now have multiple different vaccines. We have different ages eligible, which brings in different doses. We have people in the community with different needs. For example, people with severe immunosuppression are getting more vaccines than the general population, because their immune response is suppressed.

There is massive complexity in the vaccination programme, but we have done an amazing job in Scotland in rising to each and every one of the challenges. I was in absolute awe. Last December, I remember when omicron hit and we thought—like Brenda in that famous clip—“Not another one!”. It just seemed incredible that we were facing, in the depths of winter, when everybody was looking forward to Christmas together, yet another variant and that need to get boosted by the bells at new year. It was the most phenomenal effort and response from our NHS and our teams.

I volunteered at a vaccine centre during the previous winter. People came out of retirement to help. I did not go through the training to vaccinate; I was just helping out with managing crowds. Jason Leitch has been vaccinating. People from Public Health Scotland have come forward and joined and the vaccinating team. It is just remarkable how our health professionals have answered the call. It is also remarkable how our communities have answered the call, because vaccines do not work unless people get them into their arms.

If I think about the levels of vaccination that we have achieved in Scotland, it is absolutely incredible for a vaccine that is not mandatory and that has had to be delivered at pace in a changing environment for a brand-new virus. There is no doubt that we have learned a great deal from each and every challenge that we have faced throughout the pandemic.

I think that it is inevitable that, in a global pandemic, people will feel a little bit frightened and lack confidence, frankly. The thing to communicate about how the vaccines were developed is that no stages in development were skipped. What happened was that Governments underwrote the development and took the risk out of it for drug companies so that the trials that are required—the different phases of clinical trials—happened simultaneously instead of one after the other. Normally, in drug development, those things take up to 10 years because an early trial is followed by a trial on humans and a trial for efficacy and so on, with those stages happening one after the other and an assessment being carried out between each stage to see whether the vaccine seems to work. Because we needed the vaccine so quickly, there was a high risk of putting a lot of money into something that would not work, which drug companies do not want to do. Therefore, the risk was largely underwritten by Governments and those trials were able to happen simultaneously. No steps were skipped, and it is really important that the population understands that.

On the yellow card surveillance, there are surveillance schemes all around the world. The yellow card surveillance scheme is the one that is run by the MHRA. Post-marketing surveillance is absolutely vital when any new drug is developed and used in a population, as it gives us information. As Jason Leitch says, it does not establish causality but we get information on a population-wide level of what things might happen when a new drug is used. When new drugs are launched into the population, every side effect is reported through the yellow card scheme. There are ways that individuals themselves can submit a yellow card report, or their medical team can do it—there are loads of routes into that. What happens is that you gather a huge amount of information. What we have seen is that that level of analysis of that information has happened at absolutely remarkable pace. Of course, this is happening all around the world. The whole world is being vaccinated and we are learning globally. From all of that global data, we are getting a good idea of how to use the vaccines safely and effectively in the population.

The example that Linda Bauld gave of the changing picture for pregnant women is a good example of understanding. Rarely are drugs tested in pregnant women, for obvious reasons, so, when new drugs are launched, it is difficult to say definitively that they are safe in pregnant women. However, the vaccines were used worldwide and millions of pregnant women have now had those vaccines. That data is collected and analysed and used to refine the offer and make it even safer and more effective as we go on. It is really remarkable. I hope that that level of global scientific collaboration continues beyond this particular emergency.

Professor Leitch will be able to give you more detail, but we are watching the numbers closely. The numbers are rising. That was expected, actually; it was not unexpected. We anticipate that we will face rising then waning numbers of cases of Covid for some years to come. My experts tell us that we are about halfway through the pandemic; we are not at the end of it, as some people might perceive. I will let Professor Jason Leitch give you much more detail.

Can you believe that even I will possibly be eligible? [Laughter.]

See—I did not remember that one, although “Hands, face, space” is a very simple three-word message that science would say is an easy thing for people to remember and to understand.

To be honest, though, with either of those, people would know that it meant that they had to do something. They might not remember the specific phrases, but we see even now, two and a half years into the pandemic, that people know and understand the non-pharmaceutical interventions that they can deploy to keep themselves and others safe, which the information was about. We now hear people talking about whether they should be wearing face coverings again. Everybody is washing and gelling their hands much more routinely than they did pre-pandemic and they know that keeping their distance is a way to keep themselves safe. People know that being outside is a way to keep themselves safe and they know that ventilation is helpful. Lots of people know the behaviours that they need to adopt to keep themselves safe, which I think is an important measure of the success of the information campaigns.

No, it is fine.

That is challenging. As a scientist, I have a real passion for that issue. I think that, generally in our population, we do not have a great understanding of science. Science is not black and white and does not tell you what is right and wrong, but it helps you to answer questions. It is a way of seeking a way forward. All that it does is inform your decision making rather than tell you in a black and white way what you have to do. There is still always judgment in science. The phrase “follow the evidence base” is slightly less catchy, but that might have helped people to understand that it might be a changing feast.

There are not many positives to come from the pandemic, which has been the most testing time for the whole population, but I think that we have seen a far greater understanding of science in our population, which will stand us in good stead. We have seen a great deal of health literacy and risk assessment going on. People have gone to the Public Health Scotland website and found the data for their local area, which has informed their risk assessment of what they might need to do. I think that is a healthy and positive thing to come out of the pandemic.

As somebody who used to yell regularly at the television, I have seen a vast improvement in our scientific reporting and medical reporting. When I worked as a pharmacist, I used to regularly be frustrated by the way that significant clinical trials were communicated to the general population. We have seen that happen in a far better way. Journalists who are reporting on science and medicine have stepped up and done a pretty good job of communicating fairly complicated things to a population who generally are not scientists.

I do not know whether either of my colleagues wants to add anything.

I am sure that Jason Leitch will want to say a little bit more about that but, with any vaccine programme or vaccination, there will be a balance of risks and benefits. We have seen that very clearly played out as the JCVI gathered together the evidence for vaccinating children, where it felt that the benefit-risk balance was a little bit different. You need to take into account which population you are aiming your vaccine at. For some people, it will be a complete no-brainer because they will be particularly at risk from the consequences of that virus. For others, it will be a question of considering their own vulnerability and how much it helps the population for them to be vaccinated. Those are not clear-cut decisions.

Vaccines always carry risks. It is always a very small number of people who suffer adverse side effects. It is often the case that you cannot predict who will suffer those adverse side effects. If you could predict it, you would be able to take measures to avoid it. With a vaccine programme of the scale of this vaccine programme, where you are targeting pretty much the entire population, there are likely to be some people who suffer adverse events, but the benefits on a population level still outweigh the risks. That is a really important thing to communicate.

One of the challenges is that there were some side effects that might have been more predictable and there were people who thought that they perhaps should not have the vaccine. There was a question around people with allergies or allergic responses to vaccines. If you have had anaphylaxis in the past, it is very frightening to accept a vaccine where there is potentially a risk of allergy. Communicating messages that would reassure those individuals in relation to an individual assessment of whether someone is at particular risk from this vaccine is difficult. We could not communicate that at population level; that had to involve an individual discussion between clinician and patient at the time of vaccination.

You have just reminded me that I should mention www.travellingtabby.com, which was absolutely outstanding citizen science, was it not?

They have been on our television screens for so long helping to guide us through this challenging time. I think that there is definitely more interest in science among the population, and among the young population.

I would be delighted if an outcome of the pandemic were to be that more people were to go into science disciplines. There are lots of them, so that would be a great thing. There are very few of us in politics with science degrees, for example, which I know has been mentioned many times since I came into politics. There are just a handful of the 129 MPs who have science backgrounds. It would be useful if more people had such understanding, rigour, and the ability to analyse information and put it together to be able to cope with grey areas. To be able to make good decisions despite uncertainty and gaps is absolutely a useful skill in government, so let us have more science, please.