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The Scottish Government will closely monitor the outcome of additional testing being undertaken by the UK Health and Security Agency in order to ensure that any decisions to make Evusheld available to patients in Scotland are based on the best available evidence.

The National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland, published on 11 March 2022, sets out a new framework to shape Scotland’s health and social care workforce over the next decade. It places training, wellbeing, job satisfaction and the principles of Fair Work at its heart. The Strategy, which was co-produced with COSLA, identifies the five key areas which will support the creation of a sustainable, skilled workforce as the sector rebuilds from the pandemic. Creating the right conditions for vacancies to be filled encompasses a much broader range of issues than pay, although ensuring that pay remains fair and competitive will always be an important part of any recruitment and retention strategy.

Scotland is not participating in the NHS Pay Review Body process for 2022-23.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07532 on 19 April 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Currently the best source of estimated long COVID prevalence data for Scotland is the monthly Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting on ‘Estimates of the prevalence of self-reported long COVID and associated activity limitation, using UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey data’. ( Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ) The latest publication in this series was published on 7 April 2022 (referring to the four-week period ending 5 March 2022). It showed that:

• An estimated 132,000 people in the private residential population in Scotland (2.51%) reported experiencing long COVID of any duration (see accompanying uncertainty estimates in the following table).
• An estimated 92,000 people in the private residential population in Scotland (1.75%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously .
• An estimated 59,000 people in the private residential population in Scotland (1.12%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 months previously .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07468 on 29 March 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The ongoing costs of the COVID Status App are publicly available via Public Contracts Scotland . The costs of developing and maintaining the App are broken down between Netcompany and Jumio who provide the core App and Identity Verification systems respectively.

The most recent update from Public Contracts Scotland as of 4 March 2022 places the total value of development of the core App from Netcompany at £2,400,000.00 and the Identity Verification systems from Jumio at £4,373,360.00.

The ongoing and future costs of the COVID Status App will be published as and when these figures are available.

Whilst the Scottish Government is provided with management information on the scheduled capacity of the contact tracing element of Test and Protect only, the management of the workforce including all recruitment to the Test and Protect service throughout the pandemic has been managed by individual employers, not the Scottish Government directly.

External contractors who have supported the Test and Protect system consist of: those who have supplemented the core and fixed-term workforce and have been recruited by NHS National Services Scotland for the National Contact Centre; and those appointed by the UK Government to support contracts associated with testing. The Scottish Government was not directly involved in the process to recruit or manage either of these groups of contractors and therefore does not hold this information.

The Scottish Government is actively working with NHS Health Boards, Local Authorities and private employers to understand the exact current number of staff employed across Test and Protect which at the moment is more than 7,000. This exercise will allow us to ensure we maximise our support to each individual member of staff to sustain employment with their current employer to have access to support to move to other opportunities across the public or private sector.

In line with the timescales set out in the Test and Protect Transition Plan published on 15 March, we are in the process of engaging across the Test and Protect system to identify future resource needs.

We do not hold this information centrally. Private contractor costs that have been incurred relating to Test & Protect staff would be held by the Boards recruiting the relevant staff members. In addition, costs relating to private contractors for staff working at test sites were awarded and managed by the UK Government as part of the National Testing Programme, and are not managed by the Scottish Government.

On 1 March 2022, there were 71 UK Government-operated test centres, 39 Scottish Ambulance Service-run mobile test centres, and around 50 temporary local authority and health board-run asymptomatic test sites across Scotland. There were also 23 operational small-scale test sites in NHS Highland and NHS Grampian, resulting in a total of around 180 test sites.

As the First Minister said in her 15 March statement when she announced the Test and Protect Transition Plan, the primary purpose of testing is changing from population-wide testing to reduce transmission, to targeted testing to support clinical care. It will also be required on an ongoing basis for surveillance, outbreak management and health and care workforces.

Until the end of April, we will continue to advise those with symptoms to get a PCR test. PCR test sites will remain open during this period, though opening hours and locations may change during the transition. Test sites will close at the end of April – although a small number of mobile testing units and lab capacity will be retained for our longer term contingency and testing purposes.

A copy of the Test and Protect Transition Plan can be found here: Supporting documents - Coronavirus (COVID-19): Test and Protect - transition plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)