Home carers deserve equal access to Covid-19 tests

1 May 2020

Care workers who look after vulnerable people in the community deserve equal access to coronavirus testing, the Scottish Conservatives have said.

Nicola Sturgeon revealed increases in capacity today, but made no specific mention of home carers who continue to struggle to access tests.

The First Minister said 4661 tests took place yesterday, on the same day the UK Government aims to test 100,000 people.

Now the Scottish Conservatives have said more has to be done to ensure mobile testing can be taken both to care homes for staff and residents, but also to care workers in the community.

Last month, Scottish Care stated that more people are cared for by professionals at home than in hospitals and care homes combined.

The SNP government still has significant work to do to reach its 10,000 tests per day target, and has been repeatedly urged to be more pro-active in getting tests out into communities, rather than hope people will come to them.

Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw said:

“The SNP government is still lagging well behind on testing.

“By ensuring care workers in the community have the same access to testing as those in the NHS or in care homes, those numbers would increase.

“That would also mean the very significant number of home care workers could go from home to home a bit safer in the knowledge they aren’t taking the virus with them.

“We need to see more pro-activity from the SNP government.

“As Nicola Sturgeon said herself, it’s no use having the capacity if people aren’t physically being tested.

“If people aren’t able to go to the testing centres, then the testing has to come to them.

“There are many ways for this to be done and, frankly, it’s something we should have seen up-and-running long before now.”