MORE than 3,000 coronavirus jabs have been wasted throughout the country, the Glasgow Times can reveal.

An investigation revealed 3,115 vaccines had been wasted for a variety of reasons, including being dropped or incorrectly stores, between the beginning of the rollout in December and mid-February, the most recently available figures.

However, three of Scotland’s health boards - including the country’s largest NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Highland - insisted it did not hold a record the wastage meaning the true figure is likely higher.

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “Some Covid-19 vaccine waste is to be expected on a rollout of this scale. However, Scottish Labour has previously called on the SNP government to publish levels of wastage.

“That these figures remain inconsistent is worrying. Vaccinators are doing a wonderful job but millions of pounds of public money has been spent, and we can ill afford to lose or waste vaccines at this crucial stage in the pandemic.”

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NHS Fife revealed the highest wastage with 1,482 jabs having to be discarded up to February 12 compared with 192,032 people who have received their first dose to date.

While Orkney, which has 14,223 of its population inoculated with the first jag thus far, had the lowest loss of just five vaccines.

When quizzed about its recording policy, both NHSGGC and NHS Lanarkshire revealed it has since began monitoring it’s wastage rate.

Dr Mark Russell, lead for the Covid-19 vaccination programme for the area, said: “Since the start of NHS Lanarkshire’s covid-19 mass vaccination campaign we have administered 344,642 first doses.

“Our wastage rate is 0.31%.”

A spokesman for NHSGGC said: "The uptake rate for COVID vaccinations in Greater Glasgow and Clyde remains very high and we thank members of our staff and local communities for coming forward to roll up their sleeves and receive their vaccine. 

"A national reporting system was introduced in February. Data collated through that system shows 1037 doses not used with 483,772 doses administered, which represents 0.21% of all doses."

As of yesterday, a total of 2,668,723 people have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine with 590,174 patients already having had their second dose.

Mairi Gougeon, SNP public health minister, said: "Vaccine wastage is recorded at NHS board managed vaccination clinics. We understand that currently their waste rate is very low, and potentially lower than 1% of vaccines - considerably lower than our initial planning assumptions and lower than the internationally recognised wastage rate of up to 5%.

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"Some wastage is expected in all vaccination programmes to account for human error such as vaccines being dropped or fridges malfunctioning, and for circumstances where appointments are not fulfilled.

"Instead of criticising our NHS staff around a tiny number of wasted vaccines, we should be praising them for their incredible effort to now have vaccinated more than 2.6m with a first dose - nearly half the population of Scotland."

A Scottish Government spokesman added: “Our latest management information indicates a wastage rate of around only 0.3% in NHS board-operated clinics - well below our planning assumption of 5%, which is a precautionary approach for worst case scenarios. A total of 3.26million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in Scotland.

“As the First Minister has previously said, this is in line with global best practice.

“We are working closely with health boards to develop a tool that will capture and use data on wastage incidents to improve processes and further minimise waste. We will continue to monitor wastage rates and regularly report back. When the tool is fully operational, reporting wastage information will form part of our data on vaccinations which we report regularly.”

NHS Highland did not respond to request for comment.