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This is a matter for the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, and I have asked them to respond directly in writing to your question.

This is a matter for the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, and I have asked them to respond directly in writing to your question.

Scottish Water is funded through revenue raised from customer charges and borrowing from the Scottish Government. This finances, amongst other spend, Scottish Water’s investment programme and therefore charge revenue, or any parts thereof, is not hypothecated to particular investments.

This is a matter for the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, and I have asked them to respond directly in writing to your question.

Any decision to purchase tests for a large-scale roll-out of antibody testing in Scotland will be led by clinical advice.

Antibody testing has been underway since 6 May in Scotland to support disease surveillance and we are in the process of validating a number of antibody tests to identify which ones carry the right level of efficacy and those which are identified as meeting the required quality standards will be prioritised for purchase.

As new and more reliable tests become validated, we are drawing on clinical and scientific advice to develop plans on how they will be best deployed. However, there are still significant uncertainties about what the presence of antibodies means in terms of a person’s immunity, which means that there are significant limitations in the usefulness of these tests at the current time.

These tests can have a crucial part to play in our response to COVID-19, and we will continue to listen to advice on the emerging scientific evidence on immunity.

The National Clinical and Practice Guidance for Adult Care Homes in Scotland states that staff should not work in more than one facility and movement between care homes must be restricted. It is recognised that this can be a fine balance in achieving appropriate staffing levels, service sustainability and reducing the risks of transmission.

It is critical that we protect care homes and their residents by using infection prevention and control techniques to reduce the impact of this virus. Health Protection Scotland has published specific guidance for infection prevention and control to support those working in care home settings which is regularly updated on their website.

The Social Care Covid19 Accelerated recruitment portal, to support social care employers should they require additional staff, remains in place to support the resilience of the workforce. This enables those with relevant skills and experience to come forward and support health and social care services at this time of national emergency, reducing the need for agency staff.

Care providers have direct access to this portal if they require support due to staff shortages.

From 28 May to 7 June, 681 index cases have been recorded in the Test and Protect system. From these, 741 contacts have been traced.

An 'index case' is a person with a positive test result recorded in the Test and Protect system. New data will be released weekly, and is available from Public Health Scotland's weekly statistical report: https://publichealthscotland.scot/news/initial-contact-tracing-figures-for-scotland/ .

The R number is calculated for Scotland as well as for the other three countries of the United Kingdom, and we publish it on a weekly basis. The R number is not calculated for Scottish regions, because the ranges around the estimates would be very large and that would not help us to understand the differences between areas of Scotland. Instead of doing that, we are looking at other ways of monitoring and forecasting the level of COVID-19 in regions; we use data such as the number of cases and hospitalisations to track the epidemic. The most recent daily statistics for COVID-19 in Scotland are available by health board and can be found in the daily data for Scotland . We will also use the information that starts to come through the test and protect programme. More information about the modelling is available from a series of Scottish Government reports .

A further expansion of testing for care home residents and workers was announced on 1 May, which again focused on social care workers and care home residents. This includes undertaking enhanced outbreak investigation in all care homes where there are cases; comprehensive surveillance testing in care homes where there are no cases; and, testing across linked or group care homes, where staff may still be moving between homes following an outbreak in one. That same day, the NHS Scotland Chief Performance Officer wrote to all health boards, requesting that they start to implement these policies from 4 May.

In a further measure to protect residents and staff, it was announced on 18 May, that all staff in care homes will be routinely offered testing regardless of whether they are symptomatic. Based on the advice from the Chief Medical Officer, this testing will be routinely carried out every 7 days, regardless of whether there has been a confirmed Covid-19 case in the care home or not. This is in addition to the current measures operating across care homes in Scotland.

SG is informed by the outputs of SAGE. The relative increase in R value using different models and assumptions for school openings is published in the behavioural science report on relaxing school closures. As these model outputs demonstrate relative increases as a result of school opening scenarios, the lower the R value at the time of opening, the less likely that R rises above 1.