Hopes for imminent visits in light of vaccine roll-out in care homes
Residents and staff are in the high priority group for the Pfizer vaccine.
Care home residents and staff around Scotland will start being given the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine this morning.
NHS staff were administered the jab last week, with more than 5,000 people taking the dose.
Care homes are now top priority, having been identified as so by a UK-wide committee, and there's hope it will allow relatives to meet and hug each other once again soon.
Cathie Russell, from the Care Home Residents Scotland group, expects it to make a quick difference.
She told Clyde 1: "We're really hopeful the vaccine will be a game-changer and enable us to see relatives safely.
"We're also hoping it makes our relatives less at risk of becoming ill or dying from Covid-19.
"We wonder if we won't be allowed in unless we've had the vaccine, so that's a concern, but we believe we shouldn't be waiting any longer if it's being rolled-out in care homes.
"The fact we've been able to get one within a year is amazing."
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: This is another important moment in our journey through the coronavirus pandemic and I am delighted that we have received the authorisation we need to enable us to vaccinate the most vulnerable people in our care homes.
Officials in the government and our health boards, along with Pfizer, and the MHRA, have worked really hard to allow this to happen and it is another step on the road to our collective recovery and a return to a more normal way of life.
We are providing the vaccine to people in care homes according to the order of priority set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and we will work through that order of priority as quickly as vaccine supply allows.''
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