Chamber and committees

Yes, I accept that. Every single one of the health and social care consequentials that come our way is spent on health and social care. That has been a commitment of this Government for a number of years now. I will look to see where we can possibly increase our funding for long Covid specifically.

However, I go back to the point that I made to Jackie Baillie a moment ago, which is that our front-line spending for health per head is higher than it is in other parts of the UK. Yes, the long Covid support fund is important to increase and supplement some of the on-going work, but it is just that—supplementary or complementary to the funding that health boards are already spending. That is not just in Lanarkshire, which is the example that I have given, but throughout the country.

In my role, I am more than happy to explore that, and I am certain that whoever is in this role after me will look to explore whether that funding can be increased.

I agree with your description that some of the most harrowing testimony has been from young children. It is worth paying particular tribute to Helen Goss, who I suspect is known by most people here for what she does with Long Covid Kids Scotland. She is a force of nature. As well as dealing with her own personal circumstances, she has helped a lot of families of children and young people who are suffering the effects of long Covid. I pay particular tribute to the work that she does. She would be the first to say that we have further work to do in that area.

To answer your question directly, for children and young people with symptoms of long Covid, assessment and initial investigation are still provided by the primary care team. Primary care clinicians can, of course, then refer them to occupational health or physiotherapy for further advice or support. I have referred a couple of times to the implementation support note that is there for GPs, which has information on the referral pathways and the other support that exists. That was developed in consultation with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It sets out that, where self-management, for example, is not effective, and there is a significant impact on the young person or child’s education or quality of life, they should be referred to general paediatric services for investigation.

The £10 million of funding that we have made available to NHS boards, which I have referenced numerous times already, is also intended to strengthen services for young people with long Covid. One example of that, which I think I mentioned in the letter that I sent to the committee, is NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s recruitment of additional paediatric occupational therapist support for young people, children and their families.

Finally, I will also mention the national strategic network, which I have referenced a couple of times during this session. It is progressing a dedicated workstream that brings together clinical experts and people with lived experience to identify needs and priority actions that are specifically for children and young people.

Yes—Brian Whittle and I share that interest. I do not think that I am misquoting Brian Whittle when I say that he has described himself as a data geek or a data nerd. I am the same: I think that data is crucial and key to the issue. So many of the challenges that we have faced across health and social care have happened because we simply have not dismantled the barriers to sharing data effectively.

That is why I refer to our health and social care data strategy. I am certain that I offered Brian Whittle the chance to sit down with me and my team to go through it in greater detail. I hope that he will forgive me, as we have not yet had that chance. He should meet my officials. We are not necessarily trying to have one system across the NHS and social care, but to see whether we can use the cloud infrastructure to ensure that anyone in either system who has to access data can do so through a cloud-based system. Sharing of data is incredibly important.

There are eight priority areas for action in the work of the data strategy group; I will mention a couple of the key pillars. One is data access, and sharing data is also high up there. I could not agree more with Brian Whittle about data. If he would find it helpful to have such a meeting with my officials who are leading on the strategy, I would be happy to ensure that it is arranged.

A number of research and data points are important to us. We have referenced the ONS study. The EAVE II—early pandemic evaluation and enhanced surveillance of Covid-19—study is helpful in that regard, too. There is a variety of data sources.

I have also asked my team—we will have such discussions on a four-nations basis—to look at the international data and research that exist. I mentioned our nine research projects and I mentioned international data, but accurate local data is required. The national strategic network, which I have also referenced, has a dedicated workstream to agree outcomes, indicators, monitoring and evaluation to accelerate progress on capturing data. That will inform planning of our health service provision for people suffering from long Covid. The strategic network is trying to get consistency across the country.

I mentioned the EAVE II study, which I think you all know about. If you do not, we can provide detail on it. The initial report on prevalence of long Covid among adults in Scotland was published earlier this month; it is another helpful data source. Dr Harden is indicating that he wants to come in.

Obviously, we are involved in the strategic network, and I might ask some of my officials to come in and add some detail. The model is one that is used for trauma networks; it is well known and well tested, and it has had some very positive outcomes.

In essence, the network brings together key partners—clinical experts, those who are delivering local services and those with lived experience. We can provide more detail on some of the action that has been taken with health boards to create referral pathways, particularly rehabilitative pathways, which we know are working well in some health board areas but which, in others, clearly need more work. As I have said, one of the core issues reported by those in primary care is that they do not have information on where to refer people, and that is why the development of the implementation support note has been really important. A load of key actions has come out of the national strategic network, with more actions to come, but its value lies in bringing those three key partners together to improve services for those who have long Covid.

I do not know whether any of my colleagues want to come in on the topic of strategic networks. Chris Doyle is probably best placed to do so, given his team’s closer involvement.

Thanks for that question. You are absolutely right to ask about this. We were always concerned that apathy and vaccine fatigue might kick in among certain cohorts, but it is really important to note that, as the data shows, there has not been such fatigue among others. For example, there is still a good level of uptake from those in our older population and those in residence in care homes. That said, we have seen some drop-off in the 50 to 64 age group, for example.

We had some concerns about the uptake in relation to social care staff, so we put a lot of effort into working with the likes of Scottish Care and others to see whether we could boost those numbers. It is worth saying that our uptake rates for autumn and winter vaccines are still the highest in the United Kingdom, which is a positive, and we continue to work on a four-nations basis to see what we can do in a co-ordinated way.

As you will know, we also had in the past year the Covid sense campaign, which reminded people of good behaviours and what to do if they had Covid symptoms—it highlighted good hygiene, ventilation and so on—and it will continue to make the case for vaccine uptake. Indeed, it will be an important piece of work for us, given that the immediate impacts of Covid are not so evident, now that they are not in our news 24/7. Ultimately, if we can reduce the numbers of people suffering from Covid, we will hopefully reduce the numbers of people impacted by long Covid.

That said, I could not agree more with the premise of your question, which is that we should be doing everything in our gift to increase vaccination rates.

Yes.

I do not want a two-tier system. We have heard about that in other areas of the health service where, for example, people have waited for elective care. I will not rehearse the reasons why we are in the position that we are in and why people have felt that they have had to go private. That is not what I want. As the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I want everybody to be able to access NHS services.

I go back to what I said in my opening remarks. The science around the treatment and the symptoms of long Covid is still in its infancy—I think that everybody around the table would accept that. There is no one treatment that we can give, although a number of treatments can help with some of the symptoms. However, I have heard far too often from long Covid sufferers that, when they go to primary care or their GP, they are passed from pillar to post and there is no single point of access. I think that I can safely say that the majority of the health boards—or a significant number of them—are using the funding that we have given to them to create a single point of access so that an individual is not passed from pillar to post.

To answer your question, of course I do not want people to feel that their only option is to go private. That is why we need to improve the services that we have.

We have run a marketing campaign on the symptoms that people might suffer in order to direct them to NHS Inform. I refer Brian Whittle to a YouGov poll of 1,001 members of the public that came out in February, which found that 94 per cent of people had heard of long Covid and that 76 per cent of people agreed with the statement that

“Long Covid is a serious condition for those that experience it.”

There is good understanding of long Covid, although perhaps not an understanding, such as those around the committee table and long Covid sufferers have, of all the intricacies of the condition. There is acknowledgment that long Covid exists and that it can have a serious impact on people’s lives.

We will continue to do more to make sure that people know about long Covid and—which is important—the local services that are available. The YouGov poll certainly suggests to me that there is good public awareness of long Covid, at least at a high level.

We are doing work on long Covid with colleagues in fair work and employment. There are issues. Long Covid sufferers have told me that they did not have the most supportive employers. We are working with a variety of organisations to try to assist in that regard and to get the message out there. I have been heartened by the fact that the majority of interactions that I have had on business indicate that people have felt supported by their employers in relation to Covid and long Covid. However, that is not universal and it is not consistent enough.

We are engaging with employment colleagues. I can ask them to write to the convener with more detail about the actions that they are taking with employers in relation to long Covid, if that would be helpful.