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I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-28665 on 18 May 2020.

Current guidance, issued by Publish Health Scotland on 29 April 2020, advises that new admissions to care homes should be tested and isolated for 14 days on entering the home. Furthermore, any patients who may be showing symptoms of Covid-19 should have two negative tests before being discharge to a care home.

All care home residents showing symptoms will also now be tested for Coronavirus, a move from previously only testing the first residents to show symptoms to establish the presence of the virus.

Public Health Scotland's guidance is available at .

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at

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. These data are available from 11 April 2020 and are updated daily. There are also data on the number of people that have been tested for COVID-19 in Scotland, these are available from 2 March 2020 and provide a cumulative number. There is no breakdown of how many of these tests were for care home residents.

The link to the daily data update is:

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-28361 on 19 May 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at .

NHS Scotland has more than trebled its adult ICU capacity from a base of 173 beds to a surge capacity of 585 and, further, Health Boards are preparing to quadruple the base ICU capacity, bringing the total number of adult beds to over 700.

To deliver that increase, we have ordered ventilators from a range of manufacturers. They have begun to arrive and we expect more deliveries in the coming weeks. To bridge any gaps between now and the delivery of new ventilators, Health Boards have worked to repurpose operating theatre anaesthetic machines for use as ventilators. That is not a long-term solution, but it is allowing us to rapidly increase our capacity of intensive care beds.

Questions around non-Scotland data and associated publication regimes are matters for each relevant Government.

There are no plans to ration medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Every effort is being made to ensure that the capability and capacity needed are put in place.

Jointly with COSLA, I have agreed there will be no delay for adult social care support workers receiving at least the new Real Living Wage rate of £9.30 an hour for all hours worked, including sleep-overs and hours worked by personal assistants. This is payable from 1 April and avoid delay from prolonged contract negotiations. This package will also provide funding to third sector and independent providers specifically to ensure staff receive sick pay if they are off work ill or because they are self-isolating. A joint letter with Cllr Currie was issued to all local authorities setting out details of this arrangement on 10 April.

The SSSC, with the consent of Scottish Government, has already taken action to address the payment of registration fees for social care workers during this COVID-19 outbreak. This includes:

• New and returning care workers will not immediately have to pay the registration fee if joining the workforce. SSSC will not require registration or fee payment until 12 months passes. Previously fees had to be paid within 6 months so we have extended this period during the current pandemic.
• SSSC will not remove workers from the Register who are unable to pay the annual fee on time but will contact them at a later date if the fee remains due.
• A temporary register for Social Workers has also been established to encourage qualified students or those returning from a career break to back into permanent roles. For these social workers SSSC will waive fees, and will only request them when the emergency situation is over and that person remains employed as a social worker.

Details can be found on the SSSC’s website

Part A - Antibody

Antibody testing will tell us if a person has had the infection and enable us to learn more about the virus and how it is spreading through the population in Scotland. Evidence is evolving on whether the presence of antibodies indicates that someone is immune, and if so, for how long that immunity would persist.

Health Protection Scotland commenced antibody testing, for surveillance purposes, on 6 May. A reliable antibody test that can be deployed on a large scale is not yet available, although Health Protection Scotland is working with a number of companies on this. The aim would be to start to introduce diagnostic antibody testing as soon as possible after that.

Part B Vaccines

The Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office continues to have regular contact with equivalents in the other UK health departments as part of UK wide coordination of COVID-19-related research, and has been updated as part of this contact on the establishment of a Vaccines Taskforce to support UK efforts to rapidly develop a coronavirus vaccine. The CSO funded NHS research infrastructure is available to support vaccine studies when they are at the appropriate stage of development.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-28366 on 13 May 2020. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at