11 May 2020
The Scottish Government must “up its game” and start publishing regular updates on care home coronavirus testing, the Scottish Conservatives have said.
Residential facilities across the country are now in full crisis mode, with some homes recording several deaths of their service-users since the Covid-19 outbreak.
At the same time, testing across the board has remained low north of the border, despite SNP promises to ramp up its approach.
Some reports today suggested it was half the rate of England’s.
Now shadow health secretary Miles Briggs has demanded the number of care workers tested is published regularly, in a bid to increase rates and reduce the spread of infection.
He pointed out that many care workers could have coronavirus, but are not displaying any symptoms.
And he added more had to be done to ensure the infection “doesn’t get through the door” of care homes, at which point it is passed onto extremely vulnerable patients.
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said:
“There’s no doubt that the biggest fight against coronavirus is now being fought by our carers in residential settings and the community.
“Testing of those workers is absolutely critical, and it needs to be done regularly.
“We are now several weeks into this crisis, yet across Scotland huge numbers of carers still have never been tested for Covid-19.
“We have to act to ensure coronavirus doesn’t get through the door of care homes, because we know how devastating it can be once it does.
“The SNP needs to up its game on testing, and publishing regular figures of how many carers have been tested will help ensure that happens.”
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