The Scottish Government has revealed the scale of a vaccine letters error - admitting 12,500 Scots did not recieve their blue letter on time following an IT glitch.

Officials said the "administrative issue" which saw a batch of the appointment letters delayed by a mistake affected thousands of patients across six different health boards including the Greater Glasgow region.

The Scottish Sun reports that First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, apologised for the slip-up at Friday's Covid-briefing.

She insisted that she did not believe the glitch played a "massive part" in the 50 per cent no-show rate at Glasgow's Hydro vaccination centre last weekend.

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Ms Sturgeon was unable to provide further details of the scale of the problem at the time as she said she did not "have the numbers."

A Scottish spokeswoman said today: "We are aware of an administrative issue which has caused a slight delay in the distribution of a batch of appointment letters.

"This has affected around 12,500 letters to patients in Ayrshire and Arran, Fife, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, Lanarkshire, Grampian and Forth Valley.

"Any affected patients should still receive four days' notice of their scheduled appointment and there is no evidence to suggest that this issue has caused any impact on attendance rates elsewhere in the country."

It is still not clear what caused the IT error.