- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 08 June 2020
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 9 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it did not immediately publish details of the number of patients who have contracted COVID-19 in hospital.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 9 June 2020
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many expectant mothers have attended pregnancy scans in each week in 2019 and 2020.
Answer
Information on the number of pregnant women who have attended pregnancy scans in each week in 2019 and 2020 is not collected centrally by the Scottish Government.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many outbreaks of COVID-19 it has reported to other UK Home Nations, and on what dates.
Answer
The Scottish Government provides daily information on a range of COVID-19 measures to the UK Department of Health and Social Care and to the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office to co-ordinate, inform and report on the COVID-19 position across the UK.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many two-week urgent referrals there were in April (a) 2019 and (b) 2020 for suspected (i) breast, (ii) bowel, (iii) lung, (iv) blood and (v) prostate cancer, and what impact it considers the COVID-19 outbreak had on any variation in the figures.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold data on urgent suspected cancer referrals for April 2019. This data is not held as we do not have a two week urgent referral target as in Scotland.
The Scottish Government focuses on the 'whole cancer pathway' rather than a 2 week wait to first appointment which the 62-day standard is in place. This covers the period from urgent suspected referral from a GP or screening to start of treatment.
In Scotland the current Cancer Waiting Times standards are as follows:
31-day standard from decision to treat until first treatment for all new cancers regardless of route of referral
62-day standard from urgent referral with suspicion of cancer, including referrals from national screening programmes
To ensure patient's with worrying symptoms were approaching their GP we launched the NHS is Open campaign on 24 April 2020. Since the launch Health Boards management information shows that for the week ending 26 April, urgent suspected cancer referrals have increased and are now approximate 55% of the pre COVID-19 level. We have emphasised, and will continue to do so, that decisions around treatment should be jointly made between patients and clinicians and fully informed conversations should be had with patients about their treatment.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government what procedure is used by the NHS to review the criteria by which it decides who should receive letters asking them to shield at home because of COVID-19.
Answer
At the outset of the pandemic, the four Chief Medical Officers covering Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, published a list of six groups where people would be considered to be at extremely high risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19. Clinicians can also add individuals to the list if they feel it is clinically appropriate to do so.
The UK Chief Medical Officers agreed to seek consistency across the shielding list to support patients across the UK. Having differing advice in different countries would cause confusion for patients, clinicians and support groups.
In order to ensure a consistent approach is being taken across the four nations in relation to shielding, a Review Panel has was established.
The main remit of the Review Panel is to review the evidence on potential clinical risk factors for severe illness from COVID-19; and advise the senior clinicians group on whether to add or remove specific conditions to the extremely clinically vulnerable group.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many care homes have had their registration cancelled by the Care Inspectorate in each year since 2007 due to a failure to achieve standards, and how many such failures have been recorded since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Answer
The Care Inspectorate was formed on 1 April 2011 following the implementation of the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.
Between Inspection years 2016-17 and 2019-20, 8 care homes have been had their registrations cancelled.
Inspection Year | Total |
2016-17 | 1 |
2017-18 | 2 |
2018-19 | 4 |
2019/20 | 1 |
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many people who have been asked to shield at home from the COVID-19 outbreak are undergoing (a) chemotherapy, (b) radical radiotherapy for lung cancer, (c) treatment for blood or bone marrow cancer, (d) immunotherapy or other antibody treatments for cancer and (e) other cancer treatments that might affect the immune system.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold the specific breakdown of information requested. In total, there were 20,883 individuals on the shielding list that were requested to shield as part of the bloods cancers category the question refers to. This figure excludes non-Scottish residents. A specialist group of Haematologists in Scotland convened to further inform which patients should be considered at high risk. This work concluded on 14 April.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 May 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government whether the NHS Louisa Jordan will be used as part of the phased reopening of NHS services and, if so, on what date it will be made operational for such services.
Answer
The NHS Louisa Jordan will provide extra capacity as part of NHS Scotland’s response to COVID-19. It will initially create capacity for 300 extra hospital beds, with the ability to expand to over 1,000, if required. Although NHS Louisa Jordan will have ICU provision, our intention is to continue to provide critical care within the existing NHS Scotland estate, where possible. All health boards have been undertaking extensive work across Scotland to maximise the capacity available to manage expected rise in demand due to COVID-19 and this includes supporting patients who have conditions that are not related to COVID-19. This work is expected to provide sufficient treatment capacity to meet the rise in demand at this point. The NHS Louisa Jordan will remain an important part of our COVID-19 response and provides reassurance that we have measures in place to help treat people during this crisis. We are considering how the NHS Louisa Jordan bests contributes to that response in the future.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 April 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many items of personal protective equipment (PPE) are currently reserved specifically for care homes by the NHS National Distribution Centre, and how this compares with the figure when the COVID-19 outbreak began.
Answer
In both the private and public sectors the supply of PPE for social care is primarily the responsibility of social care providers themselves, including care homes. However, we recognise the immense pressure that global supply chains have been put under as a result of the pandemic, and therefore we established routes in March to support the sector with supplies from the national stock. These routes are the NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) Social Care PPE Triage helpline and deliveries of PPE to local Hubs in Health and Social Care Partnership areas for onward distribution or collection by social care providers.
We have not reserved a specific number of PPE items for care homes from the national stock; instead Hubs are being continually replenished on the basis of actual demand and consumption to ensure their stock levels are adequate to meet care homes’ and other social care providers’ needs, beyond providers’ own supply routes. Needs will vary across the sector and between different care homes, and this approach ensures that PPE levels through the national routes respond adequately to those needs. We are delivering between 4 and 5 million items of PPE per week from the national stock into the social care sector. Approximately 50% of these items are being consumed by care homes.
Prior to this pandemic we routinely held a pandemic stockpile of PPE, of which 25% was dedicated to the social care sector.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 April 2020
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Current Status:
Answered by Jeane Freeman on 8 June 2020
To ask the Scottish Government how many enquiries from care home staff have been received by the email address that it has set up for people to contact if they consider that they do have sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, and how many of these have been resolved.
Answer
The PPE Health Correspondence Mailbox ( covid-19-health-PPE@gov.scot ) has received over 2,000 emails, as at 14 May. We do not collate the data specifying the employment status of the enquirers. Enquiries to the mailbox are sent in by a range of people including care home staff, wider social care sector workforce, healthcare staff and members of the public.
