But the announcement came shortly after Ms Sturgeon said support from the Armed Forces should not be seen as a favour from the UK Government as they are partly funded by Scottish taxpayers.
Despite Scotland having the slowest roll-out of any of the home nations, she told First Minister s Questions that the programme was going well and announced a daily record of 38,484 jabs were administered on Tuesday.
She said her government had gone slower as it had followed an approach that very deliberately concentrated on getting the most clinically vulnerable groups vaccinated first, and achieving as high an uptake in these groups as possible.
Armed Forces now working in hospitals, vaccine centres, and testing across all four nations
Armed Forces now working in hospitals, vaccine centres, and testing across all four nations of the UK to support the coronavirus response
From: Defence medics are supporting NHS hospitals across England and Northern Ireland. Crown copyright.
Over 5,000 Armed Forces personnel are now deployed on the largest ever peacetime resilience operation, across all four of the home nations and focused on three strands of the Covid response - testing, vaccines and clinical support for the NHS.
20 Vaccine Quick Reaction Force teams have now been deployed and a further 21 are standing-up to double the Armed Forces support available for vaccinating.
GP surgeries have been told to make sure all care home residents have received their first covid-19 vaccine dose by the end of next week, with the military on standby to support the effort.
12 January 2021
With permission, I would like to update the House on Defence’s support to the national Covid response.
As Honourable Members are aware, I committed to updating Parliament on our efforts and the
MOD has been submitting weekly updates on the work to assist our outstanding
NHS and colleagues from across government, as we fight back against this awful virus.
We might not be on the frontline of this particular fight but we are with them ‘in the trenches’ and, since last year, in increasing numbers. In fact, Defence’s contribution to the Covid response now represents the most significant domestic resilient operation in peacetime. And more personnel are committed on UK resilience tasks today than at any time since the pandemic.