Question reference: S6W-03512
- Asked by: Dr. Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 6 October 2021 Registered interest
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 25 October 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to its announcement in March 2021 of a £13 million investment in the year 2021-22 to establish Scotland’s own genomic sequencing service to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, what progress has been made on this, and how it will be expanded to include human genomics in line with the genomic strategies across the rest of the UK.
Answer
Phase 1 of the upscale of the NHS SARS-CoV-2 Genomics sequencing service from 200 samples to 684 samples/week is complete. Phase 2 to further expand the service will continue throughout the rest of the year to achieve an increase of up to 1000 samples/day.
In phase 3 of the project, due for completion by April 2022, a service review and options appraisal will be undertaken on future development beyond the immediate priority of sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 and how this will support Scotland’s wider public health service.
In line with our support of Genome UK, the Scottish Genomics Leadership Group, our expert group in genomics medicine are providing advice to the Scottish Government to plan our long-term agenda for genomics medicine in Scotland. The group will consider any learnings from the pathogen service and how they may apply to our work on human genomics.