Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 19 May 2020
I apologise to Mr Rennie; I think that I am about to miss the first question that he asked. I will start with the last question.
It is not for me to cancel the registration of any care home. That is a very serious matter. The Care Inspectorate has applied to the court to consider the deregistration of HC-One as the owner and provider of Home Farm care home on Skye. Because the issue is now in the court, it is not appropriate for me to say anything more about it—except to repeat that it is not for ministers to cancel registrations. The Care Inspectorate approves registrations and, if it wants to cancel them, it needs to go through that court process.
The fact that testing is iterative should not be taken to mean that it does not happen now. It means that, if I were to test negative today, that would tell us that I do not have the virus today. However, if a person wanted to be sure that their continued work in a care home was not risking bringing the virus into that care home, they would need to be tested every seven days to make sure that they continued to be negative for coronavirus. The seven-day period relates to the clinical advice on how often the testing should happen. If we went into care home X, it did not have a case, and all the staff tested negative, we would need to go back in seven days’ time, otherwise it would be a one-off. My understanding is that our position on that differs from the approach that Public Health England and the NHS in England are taking.
I apologise if I missed the first part of Mr Rennie’s question. If he wants to give me it later, I will ensure that he has the answer.