Chamber and committees

The Hydrogen Economy Cluster will raise awareness of the opportunities in the hydrogen economy, support a Team Scotland approach and provide practical steps to help companies realise opportunities in hydrogen and associated low-carbon markets. The cluster will be pan-Scotland and will play a key role in helping the energy and oil and gas supply chain move into hydrogen production, distribution and/or key areas of hydrogen demand such as transport and low-carbon heat.

Hydrogen policy officials are currently working with the Enterprise Agencies on the development of the Hydrogen Economy Cluster and further details will be available in 2022.

We continue to engage on a four nations basis for example to agree the clinical standards that underpin the certification scheme including the types of vaccination that are considered valid, type of testing, period of validity of the results and to reach agreements on international travel certification.

The Scottish Government’s recovery plan for sexual health and blood borne virus services, Reset and Rebuild, includes an action to widen access to PrEP to a much broader range of people, including those who do not access sexual health services. The plan acknowledges that this will require novel models of care and access to PrEP in settings that people who do not currently access it will find acceptable.

In the plan, the Scottish Government has committed to working with stakeholders to support and develop a number of research projects to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on service users and providers, including piloting an evaluation of new care pathways, such as a community based PrEP service.

The recovery plan also makes available an additional £0.5 million of funding, on top of the existing funding provided to third sector delivery organisations, to support specific recovery actions, particularly those focussed on testing, HIV and Hepatitis C elimination.

Finally, the Scottish Government has established an HIV Transmission Elimination Proposal Oversight Group, which will support delivery of a proposal for how Scotland can eliminate HIV transmission by 2030. The action to widen access to PrEP will form a key part of the final proposal, which is expected to be delivered by Autumn 2022.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04586 on 6 December 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 .

More people than ever in Scotland are being offered the free flu vaccine to help protect as many lives as possible this winter. The flu vaccination programme commenced on 6 September and will run until March 2022.

We are seeking to offer the flu vaccine at the same time as providing COVID-19 boosters for everyone eligible, 6 months should have passed since a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before a booster is administered. However there is some flexibility to offer a booster vaccination to the most vulnerable groups after five months.

This means that this is the biggest and most complex vaccination programme there has ever been, and has led to some people being offered their flu vaccine slightly later than normal but they will still receive them within the recommended timescale.

We remain on track with Scotland’s autumn/winter vaccination programme which has been prioritising the most vulnerable by either inviting them to come forward for a vaccination or by visiting in settings such as care homes.

The online self-booking portal for adults aged 50 to 59, those over 16 who are unpaid carers and household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals launched on 15 November, with 1,940,611 people having received their flu vaccine in Scotland by week commencing 21 November

Stopping smoking at any time is one of the best things you can do for your health, and the health of those around you.

We work alongside YoungScot, schools and further education institutions when developing our campaigns to ensure young people are aware of the dangers of smoking and the importance of making healthy life choices.

NHS Inform has information around smoking and weight gain, 'Myths' which can be used to address individual’s concerns over this issue.

www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/stopping-smoking/when-you-stop/myths

Any future anti-smoking campaigns will address these concerns to ensure that individuals are supported to stop smoking.

To date, the Scottish Government has spent £722,580.08 on media promotions relating to COP26 within domestic and international campaigns. The purpose of the domestic campaign is to encourage individual behaviour change to reduce carbon emissions and to increase awareness of the urgency to do so in tandem with hosting the COP26 summit. Internationally the aim is to promote Scotland as a global leader on climate change to maximise opportunities from being the host nation of COP26 and promote Scotland as an ideal place to live, work, invest, visit and study. The campaigns are still in progress and were planned in relation to the summit and feature messaging about COP26. Final costs will be published at the end of the financial year, when full billing and financial reconciliation has taken place.

We continue to engage with businesses including the hospitality sector about the Covid-19 status certification scheme. We have published the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment which considered the potential impacts on businesses.

There is already a process in place for doing this across the Common Travel Area, and work continues to add additional countries to this service. Full details are available on NHS Inform – see https://www.nhsinform.scot/covid-19-vaccine/after-your-vaccine/get-a-record-of-your-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-status/ .

Test and Protect’s contact tracing service can only identify close contacts based on the information provided by people who have tested positive, and we are grateful to everyone that reports all their contacts when engaging with the contact tracing system. We continue to ask people to engage with the service by phone or by completing the online tracing form, to provide as much information as possible about their close contacts during the infectious period. This ensures that the right public health advice can be offered to close contacts to cut off chains of virus transmission in the community.

We have introduced a range of measures, including increased use of digital and SMS communications and shortened call scripts for index case interviews, to ensure the contact tracing system continues to trace the contacts of people with Coronavirus and ensure they are given the right public health advice as quickly as possible, even when case numbers rise substantially. All decisions in relation to operational delivery of the contact tracing system have made in line with public health advice, including the continued prioritisation of higher risk cases. A combination of these changes is likely to have affected the average number of close contacts reported per case.