Chamber and committees

Decisions undertaken on how best to respond to COVID-19 are continually assessed against the evidence and as this evolves, so too does our response. Whilst testing for COVID-19 is most reliable in individuals experiencing symptoms it is recognised that in some circumstances there is value in broadening the eligibility criteria.

The risks associated with care homes is an example of this and why decisions were taken to expand testing to include residents on admission to a care home, all staff and residents regardless of symptoms as part of enhanced outbreak management and as announced on 18 May 2020, all staff regardless of whether COVID-19 infection has been detected.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-29478 on 10 June 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 .

An independent, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency group Incident Management Team (IMT) with responsibility for investigating and managing the Nike conference incident was established. The IMT provides a framework, response and resources to enable the NHS board and other statutory agencies to fulfil their remits.

Contact tracing was carried out by the Health Protection Teams within the NHS Board of residence for each of the cases identified. This process was supervised by the IMT.

The Health Protection Teams would have followed the Health Protection Scotland (HPS) guidance for contact tracing. This includes contacting individuals, obtaining information on any symptoms they had, arranging testing as appropriate, and providing advice. Contact tracing is a clinically led activity and I can confirm that the relevant NHS health board deployed the level of contact tracers they felt appropriate to support the IMT response.

Those who had contact with the initial international case were contact traced and the contacts of those who subsequently tested positive in Scotland were also traced. Through this process a total of 8 Scottish residents were identified, 2 of which were secondary cases linked to the 6 primary cases, who subsequently tested positive for Covid-19 in association with the conference.

Risk of deductive disclosure leading to a breach of patient confidentiality means that data about the number of people tested in any specific health board area in Scotland at that time cannot be released. However, any case that tested positive, whether related to this event or not, has always been included in our daily COVID-19 updates.

68 individuals were identified in Scotland and around 50 others in England and traced from these cases based on a clinical assessment of being a contact. It is not for the Scottish Government to comment on the actions taken elsewhere. The number of people who were tested outwith Scotland by respective agencies outside those countries is not available.

*Contact tracing was carried out by the Health Protection Teams within the NHS Board of residence for each of the cases identified.

At all times, the Scottish Government’s actions in response to COVID-19 have been guided by the best and most up to date expert scientific and medical advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), Public Health Scotland and our Interim Chief Medical Officer.

It was announced on the 12th of March that the four nations of the UK were moving from the contain to the delay phase of the outbreak at which point contact tracing was stopped. This was an appropriate decision at the time as based on the evidence available at the time.

The Gartnavel centre has been closed temporarily as the number of health and social care staff who are self-isolating and referred for testing has reduced. The testing staff have been moved into an additional mobile testing team as there are a number of staff without transport unable to attend the drive-thru centres.

The situation at the Gartnavel centre is reviewed on a daily basis and it can be stood up quickly if the number of symptomatic health or social care staff requiring tests increases again. Symptomatic care home staff are still being tested through the staff testing programme either at the other sites or by the home testing teams.

The National Clinical and Practice Guidance for Adult Care Homes during COVID was first published on 13 March 2020 and updated on 26 and 15 May. It is based on Health Protection Scotland (HPS) infection control guidance for care homes but provides more detailed practical advice around adoption of measures to protect staff and residents. It has been updated each time to reflect the extent of the outbreak, emerging evidence on ways to protect staff and residents and subsequent announcements, for example on testing. The guidance was updated by the Care Homes Clinical and Professional Advisory Group (CPAG), a multidisciplinary group of stakeholders established to provide clinical and professional advice for the care home sector during COVID. This group had approved the guidance, however it had not had final sign off from the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the Health Secretary so was published in error on 8 May. The guidance was therefore withdrawn from the website on 10 May. It was updated to take account of HPS advice on testing outbreaks and following approval from the Health Secretary and CMO, was published on 15 May. The guidance will continue to be kept under constant review by the CPAG.

The Scottish Government has worked closely with NHS Scotland to ensure health service capacity, building a national surge capacity of over 4000 acute beds, including up to 1000 at the NHS Louisa Jordan and suspending non-urgent elective operations, while vital cancer treatment, emergency, maternity, and urgent care continues.

At no point to date in the outbreak, has the NHS had insufficient acute or critical care capacity to deal with COVID-19 and emergency demand.

National Records of Scotland produce a weekly publication which includes figures for the number of deaths associated with COVID-19 that occurred in a care home.

We do not hold information as to which individuals attended the match.

The Scottish Government had no role in deciding this game should go ahead – operational responsibility for football matches rests with the Safety Advisory Group as the local licensing authority. This match was governed by UEFA, with the Scottish FA suspending all football under its auspices on 14 March.