Chamber and committees

This information is not currently available. Weekly updated data on the proportion of the NHS workforce reported absent for all COVID-19 related reasons in total is available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/

Our focus for the current Programme for Government stroke commitments is to continue our work to deliver a national thrombectomy service for stroke and define a progressive stroke pathway. We are making progress against both of these commitments, with a report on progressive stroke services due by the end of December 2021, and a Scotland wide thrombectomy service operational by 2023.

The progressive stroke pathway report, will set the intention for improving care for people with stroke and following completion of the report, we will consider the appropriate next steps to planning its implementation.

Around 10-15% of patients presenting with acute stroke in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GG&C) Health Board area are candidates for reperfusion with thrombolysis. The other 85-90% of admissions require specialist local care. Within NHS GGC, acute stroke thrombolysis is already available on a 24/7 basis. This is currently based at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) with a thrombolysis on-call rota covering the entire NHS GG&C area.

Patients presenting to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) out of hours and at weekends with acute stroke, are assessed immediately on arrival and have appropriate imaging performed. If it is thought that the individual patient would potentially benefit from thrombolysis, then they will be transferred to QEUH. Patients presenting at GRI during weekday hours, who are thought to potentially benefit from thrombolysis, would have thrombolysis performed at GRI.

Patients presenting to other NHS GG&C sites with acute stroke, and who are thought to potentially benefit from thrombolysis, are either assessed, have appropriate imaging performed, and transferred to QEUH where appropriate, or are taken directly to QEUH by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS), where stroke thrombolysis can take place.

Reperfusion in acute stroke circumstances is time-critical, as the benefit of thrombolysis diminishes with any delay to treatment. Therefore, work is ongoing within the NHS GG&C Stroke Improvement Group to develop a consultant telemedicine thrombolysis model with local stroke specialist nurse support for patients presenting with acute stroke.

NHS GG&C can provide further information on the Acute Stroke Service.

It is currently not practical to establish a definitive implementation timetable for bringing the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 (the Act) into force. Covid-19 has considerably stretched resources within Health Boards and the wider health and social care sector, with the focus being on maintaining and delivering essential services and rolling out the vaccination programme.

Prior to the pandemic, we proposed a phased commencement of the Act, with a programme of preparatory work to lay the way for implementation. This work had not concluded pre-Covid when the Act became one of several areas of policy/legislation to be paused in order to prioritise the Government’s and Health Boards pandemic response.

Additionally, during the previous session there were substantial demands on parliamentary time arising from Covid-19 and EU Exit legislation and also critical legislation needing to be progressed prior to the dissolution of Parliament.

However, the Scottish Government continues to be resolutely committed to the Act and its aims and principles. Health and social care staff across Scotland have risen to the very significant challenges posed by Covid, showing incredible resolve and flexibility, and as the Health Service recovers and remobilises we will ensure this Act is implemented as soon as is practicable to effectively drive positive change for NHS staff and patients .

The Scottish Government continues to work under the interim Subsidy Control regime introduced by the UK Government on 1 January 2021 and provisions held within the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Alongside this, consideration has to be given to any further UK Subsidy Control obligations such as World Trade Organisation membership and commitments arising from international treaties and Fair Trade Agreements to which the United Kingdom is a party.

The UK Government introduced a Bill on Subsidy Control to Parliament on 30 June 2021 with a view to implementation of a permanent Subsidy Control regime.

Officials will continue to diligently work through the UK Government’s proposals to understand the impact on subsidies, including on ferry services.

The Scottish Government’s Primary care Directorate meets weekly with the Scottish General Practitioners Committee of the BMA to discuss a range of issues including Covid related issues such as long Covid.

NHS Boards are developing pathways according to local services and the needs of their respective populations, to support people with long COVID. We continue to invest in and expand multidisciplinary teams in primary care consisting of health and care professionals that play a key role in the provision of rehabilitation services.

Since the publication of the rehabilitation framework in August 2020, we have established a National Advisory Board to oversee its implementation.

The rehabilitation programme is currently undertaking a significant scoping exercise through a self-assessment process to understand the current status of rehabilitation services in Scotland, from the perspective of the staff working in them.

The self-assessment tool has been circulated to all NHS Boards, Health & Social Care Partnerships, third sector organisations, and Leisure Trusts as part of Local Authorities.

The outputs from the self-assessment tool along with demand and capacity data will help us shape priorities, understand challenges and opportunities and inform funding decisions.

The most recent long COVID statistics published by the Office for National Statistics on 1 July 2021 state that, over the four-week period ending 6 June 2021, an estimated 962,000 people living in private households in the UK reported experiencing long COVID (symptoms persisting more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) episode that are not explained by something else). Of those people, an estimated 81,000 lived in Scotland. Detailed estimates by age are available for the UK at Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) .This detail is not available for Scotland.

We do not currently have for Scotland a breakdown of people experiencing symptoms of long COVID by age, or according to whether or not they were originally hospitalised due to the virus. We are working with the EAVE II project, on which the University of Edinburgh and Public Health Scotland collaborate. Funded by the Medical Research Council, this project used pseudonymised GP and other patient data to track the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded across Scotland. This dataset is now being used in a separate project funded by the Chief Scientist Office to investigate long COVID, and will generate analysis of people assessed as having long COVID. Early results will be available later in 2021.

The Scottish Government has supported the following research:

‘Genetic Testing for Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome and the British Coronial System’. This is currently in follow-up in NHS Grampian and ran from May 2014 to June 2020.

‘The Role of Genetic Testing & Molecular Autopsy in Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS)’, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which ran from 2011 – 2014.

‘Phenotype-driven molecular autopsy for sudden cardiac death’ through the Familial Arrhythmia Network Scotland, the Scottish Genetics Consortium, NHS Grampian and NHS Highland which ran from 2001 to 2013.

‘Non-invasive prediction of total and sudden cardiac mortality in patients with heart failure’, University of Glasgow, which ran from 1994 to 1996.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulator has approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to be given in Scotland, and across the UK. This vaccine also complies with European Medicines Agency requirements and is shown on the record of vaccination as Vaxzevria - EU/1/21/1529.

Individuals travelling abroad will still need to meet the requirements for their destination country when travelling. For example, a negative pre-departure test etc. if stipulated by the respective country.

Detailed workforce planning, in partnership with NHS Scotland health boards is underway to enable delivery of the next stage of COVID-19 vaccinations, alongside the seasonal influenza vaccination programme. On 05 July 2021, we provided health boards with the latest available planning assumptions and advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. This included workforce deployment requirements, broken down by health board, alongside planning information to enable health boards to continue to work towards building a sustainable vaccinations workforce. We will share further workforce planning information with MSPs shortly on the plans for the delivery of Covid-19 and seasonal influenza vaccinations across NHS Scotland this coming autumn.