Chamber and committees

The Pfizer vaccine must be stored at a temperature of around -70°C. For this reason, stock will initially be held in 23 specialised freezers situated in NHS Board Vaccine Deployment Centres in every NHS Board. We hope to address your other queries in a forthcoming communication from the Scottish Government to MSPs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-33810 on 23 December 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 established a new National Vaccination Management Tool, which went live on 8 October. The digital tool will assist us in monitoring data on the vaccination programme in Scotland.

For Waves 2 and 3, we plan to establish Mass Vaccination Centres in key locations such as major cities and large towns with good communications networks. However, these will not open until we have delivery of sufficient quantities of the vaccine to support such large vaccination centres - this may not be until spring. We would like to reassure you, though, that Scottish NHS Boards already deliver nearly two million doses of vaccine routinely every year and we have a comprehensive delivery infrastructure in place. We hope to address your other queries on infrastructure in a forthcoming communication from the Scottish Government to MSPs.

The existing core of trained and experienced vaccinators from the flu programme will transition to the Covid vaccination programme during this month and next. We are also actively recruiting from NHS Scotland’s accelerated recruitment portal, and drawing from the wider clinical workforce. Training started on 4 December, and so far over 4,000 people have attended webinars led by our senior clinicians.

We aim, subject to vaccine supply, to have vaccinated all those on the JCVI prioritisation list in spring 2021. However, this is dependent on how much vaccine is delivered, additional vaccines becoming available and getting MHRA approval for supply. We hope to address your other queries in a forthcoming communication from the Scottish Government to MSPs.

The number of staff employed by David MacBrayne Limited and its subsidiaries are as follows

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have worked hard to ensure that Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures in hospitals and other care settings are robust. Health care workers in oncology and haemato-oncology wards and day patient areas including radiotherapy are also offered weekly testing

All testing policies are kept under active review, in line with expert advice and the changing prevalence and local epidemiology. As outlined in Scotland’s Testing Strategy, our approach to COVID-19 testing continues to be adaptive as we deal with the pandemic and the coming winter months and planning work on delivery to additional cohorts in line with clinical guidance is underway. In line with the clinical review of our testing strategy, and further scale-up of capacity, we announced the phased roll out of testing from the end of November 2020 to all patient-facing healthcare workers in hospitals, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the patient facing workforce deployed in the COVID-19 Community Assessment Centres and this is underway.

Testing is only one measure of protection against COVID-19, alongside a strong emphasis on robust infection prevention and control measures, including the use of PPE, the extended use of face masks, physical distancing and good hygiene.

Elective surgical patients are already tested prior to admission. Work is now under way to expand this to include all planned medical admissions and emergency admissions including maternity.

The planned medical admission testing will include patients who are undergoing an endoscopy procedure, and planned medical admission patients who remain in hospital for 5 days, will be retested.

We do not yet know whether the vaccines prevent transmission of the virus, nor how long the protection offered by the vaccines lasts and clinical studies on these matters are ongoing. This will inform the Scottish Government’s plans for COVID-19 vaccination following this first programme, along with details about the supply of approved vaccines, details of approved COVID-19 vaccines’ characteristics and clinical and scientific advice from advisory and regulatory bodies.

a) The number of psychiatrists (WTE) employed by the requested NHS Boards, at September 2020, is set out as follows:

a) Vacancy data is only available for consultant-grade psychiatrists. The number of consultant psychiatry posts (WTE) vacant for six months or more within the requested NHS Boards, at September 2020, is as follows: