Chamber and committees

If you have any lateral flow testing kits available, you will be able to do so.

That is correct.

There will be an on-going element of testing as we go forward. It is not that we will just have all those testing kits in a locked warehouse. The supply will be replenished to avoid exactly the situation that Mr Mason—very fairly—puts to me, so that we utilise the resources that we have at our disposal.

Essentially, we have to make considered judgments about the prioritisation of cases and resources. Although some treatments were paused during the pandemic, we maintained cancer treatment throughout it because it is important, and we also obviously maintained emergency care and interventions for individuals. We have to ensure that we prioritise, and that we maximise capacity.

The recovery plan proposals that the health secretary set out are about expanding capacity, recruiting more personnel to support us and ensuring that we have in place all the capacity that we need to enable us to support people. We then need to maintain our vigilance and our practical interventions to try to suppress the levels of Covid, which—as Professor Leitch just said—occupies a significant amount of capacity in the national health service.

I did not say that to John Mason at all. We are currently advising people to test twice weekly. That advice will stop.

Yes. However, if there is a requirement for people to test beyond April—there are some other requirements listed in the “Test and Protect Transition Plan”; the schematic indicates “Testing to Protect high risk” and “Testing for Clinical Care”, for example—those tests will be free.

There are different elements to that. We have to continue to monitor locally for two purposes. The first is to assess prevalence. Do we have the right positioning? The strategic framework sets out risk levels. Just now, we consider ourselves to be at a medium risk level. I hope that we will get to a low risk level fairly soon. Obviously, if we get to a high risk level, we will have to take other steps. That is about pandemic management in our society, for which we have absolute responsibility.

The second element is our contribution to the global understanding of where we are. Professor Leitch might want to add elements to what I say on that, but if we see the emergence of a new variant in our society, we have an absolute obligation to make sure that we alert every other jurisdiction. If a new variant of the virus develops in Scotland, it will be our global obligation to identify it and share the information with others.

There are two levels. First, how do we control the pandemic in Scotland? Do we have the right positioning? Are the strategic and testing frameworks appropriate for the times or do we need to shift what is in them? Secondly, are we able to contribute to the international understanding of what is happening with Covid? Without the tremendous research that was undertaken in southern Africa, we would not have got as much information—or information of such quality—about omicron. That helped us to respond as quickly as we did and to avert a very serious risk of undermining our national health service.

I return to the answer that I gave to a question from the convener, or perhaps from Mr Fraser: we are operating at two levels. On population-wide surveillance, a large measure of what we do has until now been informed significantly by polymerase chain reaction and lateral flow tests. We are now moving to a situation in which population-wide surveillance will be done through waste water testing and Office for National Statistics infection surveys. That recognises that the pandemic is changing. The strategic framework that the Government has set out indicates the developments that are taking place in the pandemic and how we need to respond to them. It is appropriate that we adapt our stance as the nature and composition of the pandemic changes over time.

It will be published shortly. Essentially, the thinking around the plan has been informed by two years of experience of dealing with various outbreaks of different shapes and sizes around the country. Professor Leitch mentioned the significant outbreak at the 2 Sisters plant, and we have had a number of other examples in industrial, education and community settings, and in localities. Local health protection teams have developed a lot of good intelligence on how to respond in given circumstances.

In relation to the 2 Sisters plant, I remember the very effective approach that was taken by the public health team in Tayside, which decided not to recommend a localised lockdown, but to recommend isolation for staff and their families. That was a supremely successful intervention that was well executed and communicated. Essentially, that population was insulated from the rest of the population and there was no community transmission. That has been possible at certain moments of the pandemic.

In future, that is a more likely intervention to be undertaken than has been the case in the past six to nine months, when there has been extensive community prevalence, meaning that such tactics have been less relevant. The plan will draw on the expertise that has been built up over the past two years.

There will not be an obligation on people to do so. That is what is different.