Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 11 November 2020
If it is not reasonable, why did the cabinet secretary give assurances that all care home staff would be tested every week?
We know that that simply is not happening. In fact, the Scottish National Party Government has never met its target of testing all care home staff every week. According to the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland, none of the estimated 71,000 people who work in care at home are able to access routine testing. That simply is not good enough when we are talking about supporting our front-line workers and some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and it is a clear reminder of the risks that those on the front-line face every day while dealing with the virus.
In addition to increasing capacity and increasing the number of tests that are carried out, we need to be able to give people their results as quickly as possible.
Although regular and faster testing of staff is important, we must also ensure that our contact tracing capacity is able to cope with increasing demand during the winter months. That aim underpins our amendment. We learn in today’s Scottish Sun that test and protect is failing to meet current expectations and is performing up to five times worse than was previously claimed, with data showing that, in the majority of weeks in September and October, test and protect staff failed to contact about half of positive cases within 24 hours of being notified.
We still do not know whether we have enough contact tracers in place to meet the growing demand. We urgently need an assurance from the Scottish Government that the system will be able to meet winter demand and that it will be able to trace people quickly, so that we can reduce the spread of the virus. The system is meant to keep us safe, which is why our amendment says what it says about the contact tracing system.
We will support Scottish Labour’s motion and the Scottish Government’s amendment, and we hope that other parties will support our amendment. If we are to be able to control the spread of the virus, we must ensure that those who are most at risk—namely, our health and social care staff—are protected and that our contact tracing capabilities are sufficient to cope.
I move amendment S5M-23296.1, to insert after “on the NHS”:
“; recognises the need for the Test and Protect system to be able to provide rapid turnaround contact tracing and cope with increasing demand during the winter months”.
15:41Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.