The Royal Highland Centre, home to the Royal Highland Show, is set to be transformed into one of Scotland’s main Covid-19 vaccinations.
The grounds, which host over 220 events attracting over one million visitors a year, have up until today been largely dormant due to Covid-19 restrictions.
That includes a new £5 million members’ pavilion for the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) completed just days before lockdown in March 2020.
However, from tonight (February 3), the building is set to become a mass vaccination centre with the capacity to vaccinate more than 1,000 people every day, seven days a week.
RHASS chairman Bill Gray commented: “While this was not what we envisaged the first event at our new Members Pavilion to look like, we are delighted that we were able to offer it to aid in the battle against Covid-19.
We can think of no greater use for this building than to support the national vaccine programme and we are hopeful that our efforts will contribute to the return of events in 2021, and indeed our own flagship event the Royal Highland Show.
“We are working to ensure the Royal Highland Show can proceed without impact.”
The Members Pavilion joins other locations across Edinburgh, including the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) and Queen Margaret University, that have been repurposed as mass vaccination centres to aid the rollout of the Coronavirus vaccine.
The Scottish Government has pledged to vaccinate 1.4 million vulnerable Scots by mid-February.
