With the vaccination programme being accelerated in a bid to combat the new Omicron variant of the virus, the first minister said she did not underestimate the scale of the challenge.
But as she stressed vaccination was the “best line of defence” against Omicron, Sturgeon said: “We’ve got to bust a gut to get this programme done as quickly as possible.”
To meet the ambition of offering all eligible adults a booster dose of vaccine by the end of December means that more than 70,000 Scots a day will need to get jagged, it has been estimated.
Sturgeon, who has previously warned Omicron could lead to a “tsunami” of new infections, told BBC Scotland that government officials were currently working with local health boards to speed up the programme.
The first minister said they were considering “all of the possible options to build capacity in a system that is already operating at a very fast pace”.
This will be done by a combination of bringing in additional staff to give the injections, increasing the number of appointments at vaccine centres and looking at opening up new centres.
