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.

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 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.

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 .

Public Health Scotland advise on their website that the release of the 2018 edition of the Scottish Care Home Census publication had been delayed due to Information Governance issues.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Health-and-
Social-Community-Care/Care-Homes/Previous-Publications/index.asp

The information governance arrangements to enable the data to be sent to Public Health Scotland have recently been agreed and Public Health Scotland will soon receive the data and prepare it for publication once it is analysed. A date for publication of both the 2018 and 2019 data will be announced via the Public Health Scotland Statistical Publication Schedule in due course.

The information is available at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/
statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/general-publications/weekly-and-
monthly-data-on-births-and-deaths/deaths-involving-coronavirus-covid-19
-in-scotland/related-statistics

Spreadsheet entitled “Weekly deaths by location of death, age group, sex and cause, 2020”.

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.

The figures requested for each NHS Board area is as follows: