Chamber and committees

Agenda item 3 is evidence on the latest ministerial statement on Covid-19, and on subordinate legislation. I welcome to the meeting our witnesses from the Scottish Government. Graeme Dey is the Minister for Transport, Professor Jason Leitch is the national clinical director, Penelope Cooper is the director of Covid co-ordination and Graham Fisher is a deputy director in the Scottish Government legal directorate. Thank you for your attendance this morning.

Minister, would you like to make any remarks before we move to questions?

People can now download the digital vaccination passports that show when their vaccinations took place. As we know, some people are unable to travel, such as teenagers who have not have their vaccination and those whose PCR—polymerase chain reaction—test may still come up positive even though they had Covid weeks ago.

Is the possibility of adapting the current digital app being explored? For example, if somebody gets Covid, that information can go into the app. If they have had two vaccinations, and they got Covid on 1 October—the national health service would know that if the person had been pinged—the app would have that information and, moving forward, it would also contain their history of booster vaccinations.

I am sorry if that is a bit technical, but I am concerned that some people are currently unable to travel because they had Covid previously and their test is still coming up positive even though they are no longer positive.

My last question—it is for you again, Professor Leitch—is to do with symptoms of the virus and the conflicting information that is currently in the public domain. On 22 October, the British Heart Foundation updated the Covid information on its website. It says:

“The main Covid-19 symptoms if you are fully vaccinated”

are

“a headache ... a runny nose ... sneezing ... a sore throat”

or

“a loss or change to ... smell.”

However, the symptoms that the website lists

“if you are not fully vaccinated”

still include

“headache ... runny nose ... sore throat ... fever”

and

“a persistent cough”.

There seems to be a bit of a conflict between the guidance from the UK Government and the Scottish Government and the information that other bodies are putting out.

Thank you, minister.

We now move to questions, and I will ask the first of them. The committee is currently trialling an online platform to allow members of the public to put forward questions that the committee can ask in evidence-taking sessions, and one such question is about global collaborative working. Why are all countries not following the same travel rules? The questioner feels that, if there had been a global approach, the spread of the virus could have been better controlled.

Thank you.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I will begin with a question on vaccine roll-out. Audit Scotland has commended the progress that has been made, stating:

“The Covid-19 vaccination programme has made excellent progress in vaccinating a large proportion of the adult population ... Vaccines have been delivered in a variety of ways to make it easier for more people to access them, and the level of vaccine wastage has been low.”

What lessons can we learn from the successes of the vaccination programme, both for future programmes and for the wider delivery of public services?

Thank you. That concludes our consideration of that agenda item and our time with the cabinet secretary. I thank him and his supporting officials for their attendance.

The committee’s next meeting will be on 28 October, when we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport on the ministerial statement on Covid-19 and subordinate legislation.

That concludes the public part of our meeting.

Professor Nicola Steedman would like to come in.

Good morning and welcome to the seventh meeting in 2021 of the COVID-19 Recovery Committee. The second agenda item is a decision on taking in private item 4, which is consideration of the evidence that we will hear. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

I will bring in Jim Fairlie briefly.