Chamber and committees

Please find the requested information set out in the following table.

The Scottish Government is not able to provide the information requested due to this level of data not being publically available. In particular, individual patients may be identifiable should such hospital level information be published.

Quarterly reports on Clostridioides difficile infection, Escherichia coli bacteraemia and Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia are published, with the data broken down by Health Board, and are available her

Additionally, validated data on Covid-19 hospital acquired infection is published weekly, with information broken down by NHS Health Board to protect patient identity. This information can be accessed here.

Since May 2020 the Scottish Government has published 3-4 week projections of infections, hospital and ICU occupancy in its weekly publication Modelling the Epidemicin Scotland Coronavirus (COVID-19): modelling the epidemic - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . It is published each Thursday at 5.30pm. These projections take account of the uncertainty in transmission rates, and indicate the variability as to whether infections will increase, remain level or reduce in coming weeks.

The number of new cases has been increasing over the last week. The estimate of R has increased and now spans one. Hospitalisations have been declining from a peak in mid-July, but have now levelled off. Potential future changes in hospital occupancy and intensive care use depend on both current infection levels and the impact of the relaxations of measures which will take a few weeks to become apparent.

In the publication we have not been projecting the numbers of people expected to die with Covid 19 in recent weeks. The number of daily deaths has fallen to very low levels, too low to produce accurate projections.

NHS Scotland’s staffing levels are at a record high and the nursing and midwifery staff group is the largest, accounting for just under 64,000 Whole Time Equivalent (42%) of the workforce, an increase of 5% from the previous year. Information on the number of Clinical Nurse Specialists by specialist cancer fields is not held centrally.

There are no plans to undertake a metastatic breast cancer audit. Officials continue to closely monitor all patients referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer in NHS Scotland to ensure they are seen and treated as timely as possible.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-01706 on
‎ 24 August 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Cancer Registry, hosted by Public Health Scotland, collects information on registrations for primary cancers. It does not hold information on secondary cancers.

There is work ongoing to develop systems for the routine collection of secondary cancer data, including secondary breast cancer. However, validation of these systems would require clinical time that is being focussed on seeing patients as we continue to prioritise cancer in the NHS. Any national system for the routine collection of secondary breast cancer would take several years to produce the first tranche of data. The Scottish Government’s National Cancer Plan has committed up to £114.5m until March 2023 which will drive a range of improvements across all cancer services.

Cancer continues to be a top priority for this Government. On 28 June I announced £10 million of funding to support cancer waiting times improvements during 2021-22. This funding will support targeted diagnostic activity, including for breast cancer. We have also provided five mobile MRI scanners and four mobile CT scanners to increase diagnostic capacity across NHS Scotland.

Following clinical advice, and in agreement with stakeholders, we will not be running a sepsis awareness campaign while the COVID-19 public awareness campaign continues.

We are aiming to re-start the annual sepsis public awareness campaign in 2022. In the meantime we are in discussion with sepsis charities around how we can support them in other ways to raise awareness of sepsis.

Data on diagnosis of sepsis by age, gender and location can be found at:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual-annual-year-ending-31-march-2020/ .

At present the Scottish Government has no plans to publish data on people affected by sepsis, broken down by ethnicity.