Chamber and committees

The COVID-19 data and trend charts for Scotland are published daily and provide a range of information, including the number of care homes notifying cases of COVID-19 and the number of suspected cases of COVID-19 in care homes. The data also includes the daily number of people in hospital with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 but does not include details on how many of these are care home residents or staff. The cumulative number of people tested and the number of positive and negative tests is also provided.

Weekly data on COVID-19 in adult care homes in Scotland is available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-additional-data-about-adult-care-homes-in-scotland/

You can find figures updated every day at 2pm (including care home data) here: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Daily data for Scotland .

Test and Protect is being delivered by Public Health Scotland and NHS Boards and all Boards had an enhanced contact tracing approach in place by 28 May. Scotland’s approach uses established, tried and tested contact tracing techniques, delivered by health protection professionals in local teams, with support arrangements at national level. Local Health Protection Teams and their respective health boards have established processes in place to address accessibility issues which they can draw on. Processes are also being put in place for the national contact tracing service which is due to be stood up later this month.

Technology will support contact tracing, but not replace contact tracing teams who have knowledge of their localities. For these localised interventions, public health teams will be able to use simple digital tools to facilitate phone interviews and enter contact tracing data. People who can access public facing digital tools will be able to do so, to ensure phone interview time is spent on those who need it most.

We are co-designing our digital tools with the Scottish public and the Digital Health and Care Institute is working with Scottish Universities to undertake qualitative interviews, focused surveys and seek feedback from citizens. This will be used to inform and refine our public-facing digital tools. We will seek to ensure the digital service is as accessible as possible by seeking input from representatives from minority ethnic communities, and recognised hard-to-reach groups.

We recognise that not everyone in Scotland will want, or be able, to use digital technology in this way, and so we are working to ensure that telephone support will be available for everyone who needs it.

Guidance for individuals and employers was published on 26 May on the Scottish Government website, for those asked to self-isolate because they have tested positive for COVID-19, or because have been in close contact with a positive case.

A public awareness campaign has started and, during the week commencing 22 June, information will be sent to every household in Scotland which sets out how Test and Protect will work. This Test and Protect mailer is being created in multiple languages and formats, including easy read, audio, British Sign Language and large print format, and will be available on the Scottish Government website from the 22 June.

Our use of contact tracing teams, involvement of the public in the development of digital tools and the option to engage with the programme via telephone will help ensure the Test and Protect Programme is accessible to blind and partially-sighted people.

Education Scotland’s Regional Team role is to support improvement across the education system. Regional teams are working in partnership with local authority and school staff, discussing what is working well and what further support is required. This intelligence is used to share practice at both a regional level and to inform national support via the Education Scotland website and social media. A comprehensive professional learning package, focused on aspects of digital learning, is available on the Education Scotland website. This was, in part, built on the intelligence from Senior Education Officers’ national networks with officers and schools throughout Scotland.

The Scottish Government is publishing a range of Coronavirus (Covid-19) guidance. The education guidance now available has been developed by the Scottish Government's CERG workstreams, in which Education Scotland is an important partner. Members of the leadership team and other colleagues work across all of the workstreams and support on the development of the guidance. The publications cover a range of topics from physical distancing in education and childcare settings, to approaches to blended learning.

With the expectation now that all learners should be able to return to schools in August, these arrangements will ensure that support is in place for blended learning should there be an increase in infection rates or outbreaks that require action to control. The support will also be required for learners who may not be able to attend school for health reasons.

One of our key priorities is to ensure that children and young people, who may be finding this difficult time particularly challenging, continue to be fully supported with their learning as we begin to transition back to a greater level of face-to-face education.

The needs of individual children should be carefully considered by education authorities, schools and early learning centres within the plans for anticipating a return to schools on a full-time basis in August. Our national guidance on continuity of learning supports this approach.

To support this, we will invest an additional £100 million over the next two years to help to tackle the impact of coronavirus in our schools and ensure that children and young people get the support that they need.

We also recognise the challenges that this unprecedented situation presents, in particular for children and families from the most deprived backgrounds. Pupil Equity Fund allocations have been confirmed for two years, with over £250 million committed to schools across 2020-21 and 2021-22. This will help to provide more certainty for head teachers and aid them in their planning and decision making, in the short and longer term to help level attainment.

In recognition of the financial and other resource implications of maintaining critical provision for children and families at this time, the Scottish Government is providing education authorities and headteachers with flexibility on the use of Attainment Scotland Funding, including Pupil Equity Funding, in order that they can best support our most vulnerable children.

In addition, we are committed to working with local authority partners to deliver digital equity for our most disadvantaged children and young people through a £30m investment to support digital inclusion. That will include £25 million of funding for a roll-out of digital devices to school pupils to enable them to study online.

The Death Certification Review Service was restarted on 11 May 2020, when it was clear that doing so would not be overly onerous to certifying doctors, or prevent delays to the death management process.

The Charter of Patient Rights and Responsibilities makes clear that everyone should be given information about their treatment and care in a format or language that meets their needs. NHS Boards, who are responsible for the provision of primary and secondary eye care services in their area, will be reminded during remobilisation planning of their responsibilities under the Charter to ensure this patient right is met. We will also continue to engage with key stakeholders in the sight loss sector to ensure that changes to eye care services are appropriately communicated at a national level.

The Glasgow Regional Test Centre located at Glasgow Airport currently has a capacity to conduct 1300 tests per day (9 June 2020). This has already been increased from 900 tests a day by opening additional lanes and increasing the operating hours. There are no current plans to expand capacity further.

The Scottish Government has been leading a multi-agency collaborative Team Scotland approach to engage with Rolls-Royce and we will continue to so at both company and site level. We will consider all options available to us, and officials are now in the process of establishing a working group with the company to further explore proactive measures that utilise the wider expertise of the Scottish manufacturing support infrastructure.

We will also establish an Aerospace Response Group, which will aim to undertake an assessment of the aerospace sector as a whole, in order to demonstrate that sector’s importance to Scotland and identify where necessary the case for strategic interventions. As will be the case for Rolls Royce, we will also look to undertake individual site and company economic impact assessments where necessary.

Scottish Government investment in cancer research is primarily through the Chief Scientist Office (CSO). CSO supports cancer research through a number of mechanisms. These are:

• Over £40 million annually in the NHS to meet the additional costs of hosting research. Of this around £10 million per annum supporting the cost of cancer research (including research into brain tumours) carried out in the NHS. This figure is not routinely broken down into tumour type.
• CSO invests £350,000 per annum in the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres Network (in collaboration with a number of other funders) to assist in delivery of early phase cancer studies. This figure is not broken down into tumour type
• CSO also invests £438,000 annually in the Scottish Cancer Research Network to increase and sustain clinical trial activity in cancer care. This figure is not broken down into tumour type.
• Further indirect support is provided through an annual contribution (currently around £10 million) from CSO to the major National Institute for Health Research programmes that cover a broad range of health research including cancer research across the UK.
• Direct funding of cancer research studies submitted to the Chief Scientist Office research committees. Applications generated by the research community are assessed based on scientific excellence. The funding level is subject to quality of applications submitted. These committees have been temporarily paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They will reopen to applications with a deadline for submission of 8 January 2021.