WALES missed a target to vaccinate 70 per cent of the nation's over-80s on the weekend.

First minister Mark Drakeford told the Senedd today (Tuesday) the ice and snow over the weekend had scuppered the Welsh Government's ambition of hitting the 70 per cent target it set last week.

"We know that a large number of people aged over 80 did not feel that it was safe for them to leave their homes in the snow and, indeed, yesterday morning, in the very cold and icy conditions weren't able to attend appointments at GP clinics or in mass vaccination centres," Mr Drakeford said.

The Welsh Conservatives said ministers should "shape up" and repeated calls for the appointment of a dedicated vaccines minister in Wales.

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South East Wales MS Mark Reckless, of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly party, told the Senedd of constituents whose relatives, in their 80s, had not received their vaccinations.

He said the vaccine rollout over the border, in Gloucestershire, had managed to vaccinate 85 per cent of its over-85s by last week.

In response, Mr Drakeford said the vaccination efforts had been hampered by the weekend's "adverse weather".

He added: "All of those people will have been offered another opportunity for vaccination by the end of Wednesday of this week. So, we will very rapidly make up for that number.

"The figures of people being offered vaccination and able to take it up in Wales over the last week have been remarkable, and that should give us all confidence that we will have offered vaccination to everyone in that group in line with the ambition that we set out at the outset."

In a statement, Welsh Conservatives leader Andrew RT Davies said Mr Drakeford and health minister Vaughan Gething "must take full responsibility for this failure, and should face up, shape up, and get the vaccine programme back on track by appointing a dedicated vaccines minister and setting a commitment they can reach".

The Welsh Government has committed to offering vaccines to everyone in its top-four priority groups by mid-February, and on Monday Mr Gething said this target was still attainable despite the weekend's weather-related disruption.

“If there are a significant number of additional interruptions, that may affect what we're able to do, but I think we were to catch up this week and still be on track to achieve all four priority groups by the middle of February," he said.

At the start of January, Mr Gething said Wales would not set vaccination targets.

"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," he said at the time.

Figures released on Tuesday show 96,830 of those aged over 80 in Wales have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, accounting for 52.8 per cent of that age group.

The data, from Public Health Wales, says 67.6 per cent of care home residents and 74.6 per cent of care home staff have received their first dose of the vaccine.

A target of vaccinating 70 per cent of each of the three groups by January 25 had previously been set by the Welsh Government.

Over the weekend, only 6,295 vaccinations were carried out due to snow across Wales which saw four vaccine centres close.

Wales now has an incidence rate of 219 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people, down from 270 cases per 100,000 on Friday.

Figures published by Public Health Wales show the latest seven-day test positivity rate across Wales is 14.9 per cent.

On Tuesday, the agency said there were a further 570 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 189,152.

It reported another eight deaths, taking the total in Wales since the start of the pandemic to 4,561.

Additional reporting by PA.