Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 March 2021
Jackie Baillie has raised a number of really important points.
We want more people to take part in community testing. We want to roll it out throughout Scotland and ensure that we work with local authorities and health boards to do that in an effective way that will work.
The advertising element is absolutely critical. We need people to know that community testing facilities are available in their communities and that they can access them. We have worked with health boards on communications to ensure that they are doing all that they can locally, and the Government is doing what it can to advertise community testing and to encourage people to take part in it, when it exists in their areas. We are more than happy to look at the matter to see what more we can do to push the message even further out.
Jackie Baillie talked, as Donald Cameron did, about our PCR capacity and the fact that not all of it is being used. The prevalence of the virus has fallen in recent weeks, thanks to the efforts of everybody who has been sticking to the restrictions and guidelines, and thanks to progress in our vaccination programme. Prevalence falling means, of course, that there are fewer people with symptoms isolating and booking tests, because there are fewer people who are ill with Covid. As I said in my previous response, we know from experience that that can change. We need resilience in our testing system so that we can respond if demand increases again.
PCR testing is only one aspect of our testing programme. There is also extensive lateral flow testing for people without symptoms in schools and workplaces throughout the country. We will continue to use all our testing capacity as effectively as possible.
Jackie Baillie’s last point was about self-isolation, which is absolutely critical in relation to all the areas that we are looking at in tackling the pandemic. It is critical alongside vaccination, our testing programme and all the other non-pharmaceutical interventions, including social distancing and the wearing of face coverings. Self-isolation is key to the approach.
On the figures that we have for people who are self-isolating, a UK-wide survey showed that 80 per cent of people were adhering to self-isolation advice. We are undertaking our own work to identify exactly what the situation in Scotland is.
We need to ensure that people are aware of the support that is available to them, and it is crucial that we get that right. However, we have significant packages in place, and we are trying to help as many people as possible and to get the message about the support that is available out as much as possible.