Hansard

I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for shedding light on the new information that there are linkages between Covid-19 and thrombosis, as well as other linkages, which would suggest that there is a need for further consideration of what preventative interventions may be appropriate in identifying cases where there is a risk predisposition. It would be well worth putting to that to the minister. I am new to this and I do not know the petitioner, but having read through the papers, I picked up that the loss of his daughter was a crushing blow. He has been through the mill. One death is one too many and I bear that in mind when I refer to numbers. However, there is a clear conflict between the figures that he has provided, which indicate that there are 11,400 deaths per annum in Scotland, whereas the figures in the Scottish Government’s submission indicate that there were 380 deaths from blood clots in 2021 and a total of 1,925 where blood clots were mentioned on the death certificate—380 as an underlying cause and 1,545 as a contributory cause. In turn, the petitioner replied saying that: “It is not the first time the Scottish Government has quoted one set of figures when there are other figures which reflect the case I put forward”. I would be interested to learn more about that and to tease out why the figures that he refers to are roughly 10 times greater than the figures that the Scottish Government uses. Whether or not there have been 1,000 or 10,000 deaths, it is such a serious thing; the consequences can be fatal in serious cases. Whether there is a public information campaign or other specific actions that are taken on the basis of proper clinical considerations about preventative action, we need more information on the matter from the Scottish Government. I do not have a view on whether we want to do that by letter or in an evidence session.