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Ministers did not see resilience partnership plans following exercise Silver Swan. Regional Resilience Partnerships plans are not routinely shared with Scottish Government Ministers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-29482 on 9 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at .

The Scottish Government has made available an additional £3 million marketing spend in Scottish newspapers across the rest of the year. This will be targeted where it is most needed, including local newspapers, to support them during the COVID-19 crisis.

We recognise the importance of local newspapers and other local media outlets, and will consider how best to support their long-term future as part of the recovery process.

The Scottish Government is not considering the establishment of a "national general practice service".

Since the inception of the NHS, general practice has developed as an independent contractor model. After consideration and wide discussion the Scottish Government and BMA agreed in 2018 that general practice would continue as an independent contractor model.

The Scottish Government is taking steps to develop a robust understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on young people’s mental health and to respond to these.

The Mental Health Research Advisory Group has been established to monitor and interpret research developments. This will help us to put in place evidence-based responses across the population including for young people.

The Chief Scientist Office is funding rapid Scottish led research on COVID-19, including studies looking at Children Young People’s mental health, with a specific focus on vulnerable children. We will also continue to monitor surveys and research such as the Young Scot Lockdown Lowdown.

We have invested £105,000 to support Young Scot to create Aye Feel, an enhanced digital mental wellbeing resource for young people. The new content is hosted on Young Scot’s own digital platform – as well as on social media. Aye Feel provides a place where young people can find information and advice within Young Scot’s well-established set of services which young people already use.

The type of tests being used in Scotland (real time PCR assays) ar e widely used for the detection of respiratory viruses, as well as a range of other viral pathogens, owing to their speed and versatility.

Scottish laboratories are working in collaboration with the Scottish Microbiology & Virology Network (SMVN), National Laboratories Programme (NLP) and Health Protection Scotland, as well as linking in with Public Health England, to ensure that all tests are quality checked and validated for use.

Based on work by NHS Lothian on symptomatic cases the accuracy of tests for clinical diagnosis is 98%. This was presented in a Royal College of Pathologists webinar - available .

I refer the member to the answer given to S5W-28179 on 8 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at .

We are not aware of any evidence from worldwide literature that we are aware of that suggest that air conditioning systems spread COVID-19, however we recognise that our understanding of COVID-19 continues to grow and expand and we will continue to review new evidence as it becomes available.

Air conditioning and ventilation systems in hospitals are designed and operated to reduce the spread of airborne infection of many types. The guidance followed across the NHS is published on the Health Facilities Scotland web site:

Information on all admissions to care homes is not held centrally; data on how many people have been admitted to local authority care homes will instead be held by each local authority.

We have published the that sets out how Health Boards will follow national and local clinical advice to safely and incrementally prioritise the resumption of services paused during the current public health emergency. This is in the context of maintaining COVID-19 capacity and resilience, where many of the specialist pain workforce was re-deployed to, and providing appropriate support for social care.

As part of this, the Interim Chief Medical Officer and National Clinical Director have provided an outline of services that could be prioritised including:

• cancer services, especially referrals and postponed treatments
• expanding treatments for non-cancer urgent inpatients and outpatients
• outpatient therapies where delay will increase the risk to patients, such as management of macular degeneration, paediatrics and respiratory services
• mental health support
• treatment room services such as blood monitoring and B12 injections

The above is in line with the Faculty of Pain Medicine guidance of 15 May, which refers to a letter issued by NHS England advising the initial focus should be on urgent and time critical work.

Our approach is driven by clinical priorities, as well as what matters to people’s quality of life. We are therefore engaging with Health Boards and stakeholders to stimulate a national discussion to inform local and regional planning to resume hospital pain management services as quickly and as safely as possible, and to evolve the Scottish Chronic Pain Service Model to improve access to care and support for pain management in the community.