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The Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on the number of nurses working in the NHS who are employed by agencies.

I announced on 23 June that health care workers will now be routinely tested where the evidence tells us that it is appropriate to do so. All health care workers connected to a nosocomial outbreak (ie, outbreaks originating in a hospital) will be tested regardless of whether or not they have symptoms. We will also test, on a weekly basis, all staff working in specialist cancer units, in long-term care of the elderly, and in long-stay mental health wards. Boards were asked to start this additional testing by 8 July.

On 23 June, the Health Secretary announced that we are broadening testing of health care workers and now, all staff connected to a nosocomial outbreak will be tested regardless of if they have symptoms.

In addition, from 08 July, we will also test, on a weekly basis, staff working in specialist cancer units, in long term care of the elderly and in long stay mental health wards who are patient facing.

As announced by the Cabinet Secretary on 18th May, from 25th May all care home staff, including non-nursing staff, have been offered weekly testing regardless of whether the care home in which they work has a COVID-19 case.

The Scottish Government understands that many carers are under additional pressure at present. Together with COSLA, I wrote to local authorities and Integration Joint Boards in April encouraging them to prioritise additional carer support in their local plans for responding to the pandemic. This is on top of the extra £11.6 million for carer support in the 2020-21 budget.

We are working alongside key organisations to ensure carers have the advice they need to help protect themselves and their loved ones during the COVID-19 outbreak.

We established a £500,000 fund to help local carer services adapt to providing advice and emotional support remotely.

We made changes to our £3 million Short Breaks Fund eligibility criteria so that more carers can access breaks that are suitable at this time. We have provided an extra £178,750 to Family Fund’s Take a Break Scotland fund to support parent carers of disabled children and young people. This will allow grants to be provided to an additional 650 families this year to take a break.

We recently announced additional funding to support young carers. This includes £200,000 to Young Scot’s young carer package to provide vouchers for retailers and subscription packages and £100,000 for the Time to Live fund, for local carer services to provide small grants to young carers.

We were pleased to work with the national carer organisations to develop the National Wellbeing Hub (www.promis.scot) which was launched in May. The Hub provides information and support on health and wellbeing for all those who work in health and social care, and unpaid carers.

We have provided an additional £3.8 million to begin to increase the capacity of NHS 24’s telephone and online services, including making the NHS 24 Mental Health Hub available 24/7 and expanding the Breathing Space helpline and web support service.

A webpage has been published on the Scottish Government website which provides specific information for unpaid carers during the COVID-19 outbreak: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-advice-for-unpaid-carers/ .

Workforce education for Contact Tracers is developed and delivered by Public Health Scotland, NHS National Services Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland.

For Tier 1 contact tracers, working within the newly established National Contact Tracing Centre (NCTC), the workforce education programme is a mixture of self-directed and virtually hosted facilitated training days. The duration of the learning pathway varies depending on roles and experience, with ongoing support provided as required. Tier 2 of the service is being delivered by specialist staff across NHS boards who will already have had the appropriate health protection training and also have access to the educational materials developed for the NCTC if required.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) recommends EU/EEA members and the UK generate R rates, as explained in guidance it produced in June. The ECDC published the document ‘Monitoring and evaluation framework for COVID-19 response activities in the EU/EEA and the UK’: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19-framework-monitor-responses.pdf . In this framework document it is explained that the ECDC itself does not collect, or calculate, R rates.

Individuals returning to Scotland after visiting other parts of the UK are not being asked to quarantine for 14 days upon return.

The Scottish Government’s target for paying all bills is 10 working days from date of receipt.

Please find the requested information in the following table.

The Scottish Government and sportscotland have been working with stakeholders, including Scottish Sporting Governing Bodies, local authorities and leisure trusts, to develop appropriate sectoral guidance for the resumption of organised outdoor contact sport. This can be found on the sportscotland website . Similarly, sportscotland have been working with partners to develop, review and refine their sport specific guidance in line with the current restrictions.

We will continue to work closely with partners as we prepare for the resumption of outdoor contact sport for adults when it is safe to do so. Non-professional adult outdoor contact sport is expected to resume in Phase 3 of the route map, but not before 31 July at the earliest.

Since 13 July 2020, children and young people (0-17) have been able to play outdoor contact sport in an organised setting, where there is sport specific guidance in place from the Sport’s Governing Body. These changes relate to activities being run by an organisation, not to informal sport between groups of friends.

There is no shortfall in staffing numbers within the contact tracing service as part of NHS Scotland’s Test and Protect. Low numbers of people are currently testing positive for COVID-19 and Boards are sufficiently staffed to meet that demand, but the staffing model is designed to be able to increase or decrease in response to demand.

The contact tracing workforce is designed to be a flexible resource and health boards can call upon a total pool of over 2,000 staff who are available at short notice.