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While the Scottish Government strongly encourage care home staff to take up the vaccine, we have no plans to make vaccination mandatory for social care staff.

Whilst we strongly encourage those eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccination to do so, the decision is one of personal choice, and we have no current plans to introduce mandatory vaccination, or to impose any penalties relating to this.

Employers should be aware that care home staff working in Scotland are not mandated to receive the vaccine. Each employer will need to consider their own specific circumstances and make sure their approach is consistent with their own existing obligations and relevant legislation.

Public Health Scotland have confirmed that a hot debrief is guidance and not mandatory. The Incident Management Team therefore did not completed a hot debrief relating to the COVID-19 outbreak at the Nike Conference. Public Health Scotland have, however, published the Incident Management Team Report relating to this event. Learning around Covid-19 is a continuous process and findings such as this report inform the wider response to the pandemic in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has never received an offer from the UK Government to adapt its app to support our needs. It is appropriate that we design a scheme that is right for Scotland, works in our context, and offers us the flexibility to adapt to our changing circumstances.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03618 on 8 November 2021. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03940 on 2 November 2021.

NHS Scotland already utilises an electronic prescription message between GP practices and community pharmacies which runs in parallel with paper prescriptions. However, the use of paper prescriptions is still a necessity at this stage as a legal requirement.

The Scottish Government has commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to take forward a number of digital priorities in response to COVID. This national programme includes investing in development of a new ePrescribing and eDispensing pathway by enabling the use of advanced electronic signatures in primary care and addressing the need for an end-to-end digital solution that will support replacement of the paper prescription from all community settings with a digital solution. The programme recognises that electronic prescribing will help some vulnerable sections of society, but we must also ensure others are not disadvantaged and the solution adopted should address patient needs including digital exclusion. It is difficult to be precise on timescales at present but significant progress on the technical and process models continues at pace and the Scottish Government is committed to deliver a solution through this programme.

Our refreshed Digital Health and Care Strategy includes a clear approach on how we will empower the public to manage their health and wellbeing through digital means. This work will look to give greater access to things like health records and being able to manage prescriptions online.

In addition, patients who have a long-term condition can access the ‘Medicines: Care and Review Service’ at their local community pharmacy. It promotes a partnership approach between the pharmacist, the patient and their GP practice. Patients with stable long-term conditions can receive serial prescriptions for a duration of 24, 48 or 56 weeks which are dispensed in regular intervals by the pharmacy and remove the need to request regular repeat prescriptions.

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 Scottish Government is fully committed to ensuring a sustainable medical supply pipeline into the NHS. In response to overall UK undersupply of medical graduates, the Scottish Government has been expanding university medical school places since 2016 and has created 269 additional medical undergraduate places (a 32% increase over 2016 levels).

The recent Programme for Government also sets out a further commitment to increase medical school places by 100 per annum over the course of the Parliamentary term and to double the number of widening access places.

Public Health Scotland's weekly respiratory report indicates that up to week 42 (week ending 24th October 2021) a total of 944,989 individuals, among different eligible cohorts, have received influenza vaccine. This season a combination of data recording systems has been used to generate the influenza vaccine uptake data as part of the Vaccine Transformation Programme (VTP) and the adoption of new systems for the scheduling, booking and recording of influenza vaccination. Thus, the data presented for season 2021-22 are not directly comparable to influenza vaccine uptake in previous seasons.

Although it is not possible to directly compare with previous seasons, the data indicated that the overall influenza vaccine uptake for Scotland in 2020-21 was higher than 2019-20 season in most eligible cohorts; notably for those aged 65 years and over with an overall uptake of 79.7 % compared to 74 % in the 2019-20.

The cost of funding a Scottish domiciled student from entry to university through to graduation is set out in the first table. The cost of funding a student from the Rest of the UK (RUK) from entry to university through to graduation is set out in the second table.

The COVID-19 booster will be administered by both Health Boards and GP practices. Health Boards will seek to make best use of their locally available resources when planning delivery whilst being mindful of the need to protect core GP services.

The Scottish Government aim to respond to all ministerial correspondence within 20 working days. Correspondence from MSPs to Scottish Ministers is routinely answered by a Cabinet Secretary or Minister.