Chamber and committees

We expect that the funding for the implementation of National Cancer Medicines Advisory Group recommendations to be made available for the remainder of the financial year.

Our National Cancer Recovery plan will address COVID19 risks in a number of ways, which will not be disease specific as the mitigation of these risks will help a wide range of patients.

Health Boards have been tasked with urgent implementation of local Clinical Prioritisation Groups (CPG’s) that will oversee ‘green-site’ theatre allocations on a regular (weekly) basis to ensure that prioritised patients are apportioned appropriate, and preferential, access to all green-site theatres.

Elective cancer surgery should be upscaled in ‘green sites’ with full adherence to and implementation of national policies for patient and staff testing before, during and after surgery.

Safety measures around use of personal protective equipment and the enhanced cleaning programmes.

Blood Cancer patients will also benefit from our future of shielding planning which will:

• Provide people with updated clinical evidence about their conditions and what that means for their risk from Covid,
• Help those shielding understand the changing levels of infection in the community and how to reduce the chance of catching the virus
• Provide that information in a way that is accessible, understandable and helpful,
• Give people who are shielding access to support that can help them make informed choices about their lives,
• Support people shielding to put their choices into practice.

The Scottish Government publishes a range of daily and weekly data on the Scottish Government website. The Scottish Government does not currently publish a detailed breakdown of tests per board, instead publishing the number of new positive cases each day at a Scotland level and the cumulative number for each Health Board: available here https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-trends-in-daily-data/ . We are committed to providing robust data to monitor the evolving pandemic and undertake regular reviews of the information published on the SG website https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/ and the UK coronavirus website https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ .

Further information is available on the Public Health Scotland Covid-19 dashboard https://publichealthscotland.scot/our-areas-of-work/sharing-our-data-and-intelligence/coronavirus-covid-19-data-and-guidance/ . The Scottish Government has also produced analysis on ‘exceedance’ per Local Authority. This is to calculate whether the number of confirmed infections (based on testing) in each area exceeds the number that was expected, given the number recorded across the country. This is available here https://www.gov.scot/publications/?term=modelling&cat=filter&topics=Coronavirus%20in%20Scotland&publicationTypes=research-and-analysis&page=1 .

On 19 August 2020 we announced funding of £1 million to provide grants of £1,000 and £1,500 to businesses that were required to close as a result of targeted local restrictions in Aberdeen. This included £100,000 of discretionary support for sectors not required to close by the regulations. The funding is administered by Aberdeen City Council. The Council estimate that around 600 businesses were required to close as a result of the restrictions. As of 14 September 2020, 129 businesses directly affected by the restrictions had received grants to the value of £145,000 and a further 75 businesses had accessed grants through the discretionary fund to the value of £84,500. No businesses have been unable to access support due to the limited size of the funds.

The Scottish Government has, as of 16 September, not received requests from other cultural venues or events for the provision of loans and has no current plans to make such loans available.

Through the Scottish Government’s £42 million Detect Cancer Early Programme a new social marketing campaign was launched in September 2018 to raise awareness of potential cancer symptoms, including those of haematological (blood) cancers.

The Scottish Cancer Coalition – which blood cancer charities help form - was engaged heavily throughout the campaign and will remain involved in any future Scottish Government awareness raising activities.

The ‘Survivors’ campaign, which ran across TV, radio and online channels, aimed to highlight that more people are surviving cancer than ever before and reinforce the importance of acting early, while signposting to more information on common signs and symptoms. A roadshow also targeted around 30 locations across Scotland in 2019 to further raise awareness of potential symptoms.

Latest Scottish cancer incidence projections for the period 2013-2027 were published by ISD Scotland on 18 August 2015. This data-set only includes projections for leukaemia and lymphoma, not myeloma.

The projected number of cases for the 2013-2027 period are 2,931 for leukaemia and 7,560 lymphoma (Hodgkin & Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma combined).

The next release of cancer incidence projections are due to be published this year (2020) by Public Health Scotland.

The Scottish Government is developing a Cancer Recovery Plan to be published this Autumn. Focusing specifically on service recovery across diagnosis and treatment over a two year period, the plan will tackle inequalities and re-design services to ensure a more resilient future across cancer services in Scotland for all patients.

Cancer incidence projections for Scotland

A monthly breakdown of cancers diagnosed in Scotland are not held by The Scottish Government. This data is collected by The Scottish Cancer Registry and published annually by Public Health Scotland.

Latest cancer incidence rates were published on 28 April 2020, capturing those diagnosed in 2018. This data shows that there were 2,363 blood cancers diagnosed in Scotland in 2018 (this includes Hodgkin Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, Myeloma and Leukaemia).

2019 cancer incidence data is due to be published in April 2021.

2018 Cancer Incidence Data

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-31366 on 7 September 2020. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Scottish Government has discussed this with Grampian Health Board who advised that given the total small number of COVID-19 inpatients in Grampian, this should be considered as personal identifiable information and therefore cannot be released.