HEALTH minister Vaughan Gething said the Welsh Government would not publicly be setting targets for the number of vaccinations it wants to see administered in the coming weeks.

In the first three weeks since the Pfizer vaccine was approved, 35,000 vaccines were administered, and Mr Gething added 22,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine were available for the start of its Welsh rollout on Monday.

However, when asked if he would be setting targets for issuing certain numbers of vaccinations, Mr Gething said it that would "do more harm".

READ MORE:

"I understand why there's pressure to have numbers and understand why there's a pressure to say ‘tell us when we’ll get to a certain point in time’.

"But we're still building up an entirely new process - we've only had three and a bit weeks to go through this already," he said.

"I've also indicated we'll publish some milestones in terms of achievement - so when we're getting to the point of completing our care home delivery, we’ll confirm when that is, and when we get to completing different occupational groups, we’ll confirm when that is as well.

"We will be transparent together with the weekly update on the vaccination numbers that we've got, but this is still so new I think it’s really important to report honestly where we are in the programme to give that indication.

"I think we would do much more harm if you gave an artificial ‘plucking a figure out of the air’ and we then didn't achieve that.

"It wouldn't be that there's been tremendous success in getting 99,000 people vaccinated in a certain week, it would understandably be painted a failure not to add an extra 1,000.

"That's why I think it's important to go at the maximum pace possible to protect as many people as quickly as possible, because that is the biggest factor in allowing us to return to more normal choices that I know many of us are looking forward to within this year."

The health minister said the Welsh Government would publish weekly vaccination figures, as well as retrospectively announce when certain milestones - such as all care home residents or paramedics - are met.

"I think we're going to reach at about the same time as every other UK nation the completion of not just care home residents, but people in the first category, the first priorities, that we're currently vaccinating," he said.

"So I appreciate everyone has questions, but I think the people at the end of this will see that we have not been behind the pace and actually the significant acceleration that we'll see in the coming weeks will get people an even greater measure of confidence about the coming months ahead."

Mr Gething said everyone in Wales would receive a letter from NHS Wales with information about the vaccine rollout and "provide people with a measure of assurance about the vaccine rollout and how they will be contacted."

"We will make efforts to publish the broad text of that, so people can see the information even if they haven’t had their own hard copy yet," he said.