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The information is not held centrally. Data on the number of people admitted to hospitals from care homes is not recorded systematically in the data submissions from NHS Boards to Public Health Scotland (PHS). PHS have analysed and linked a suite of their management information data sources in order to identify people admitted to hospitals from care homes. This analysis was unable to produce reliable answers.

PHS will now work with NHS National Services Scotland, local Health and Social Care authorities (NHS Boards and IJBs) and the Care Inspectorate to improve national information so that these types of questions; as well as ones in relation to patients discharged from hospital to care homes; can be answered in future.

Targeted clinical guidance has been issued to support decision making in a range of areas including clinical prioritisation. This includes:

• Clinical and patient guidance disseminated to clinical and oncology teams on the 30 April which has been kept under constant review.
• The Framework for Recovery of Cancer Surgery to assist NHS Scotland prioritise those most in need of cancer treatment.
• Clinical guidance has been published on q(FIT) testing to specifically support decision making for those colorectal cancer symptoms.
• Published Re-mobilise, Recover, Re-design: The Framework for NHS Scotland on 31st May to support clinical decision making as NHS Boards begin to restart paused services. This Framework sets out how NHS Boards will follow national and local clinical advice to safely and gradually prioritise the resumption of services while maintaining COVID-19 capacity, resilience and providing appropriate support for social care.

Throughout the pandemic we have been clear that urgent, emergency, Maternity and Cancer services should continue to be available and that the NHS is open for those who require medical attention.

Digital consultations have played an important role in allowing people to continue to access appointments during Covid-19 with nearly 17,000 consultations being held each week across Health and Care services. Feedback on using our Near Me video consulting service remains extremely high and in mobilisation plans we have now asked for Health Boards to maintain and build upon this. We would expect a video consultation to take place whenever it is clinically appropriate to do so.

To support its wider uptake and awareness of the service, we are currently in the middle of a public engagement exercise to ensure that we gather feedback on areas where the service is particularly beneficial or where it may not be appropriate for such a consultation and we will use this feedback to adjust our approach to scale up once we have collated the information. The survey can be found here - https://www.nearme.scot/views .

The Data requested by the member is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Whilst the majority of cancer treatments have continued throughout this pandemic, some patient’s treatment plans may have changed to minimise their individual risk. Those that require changes will always be done on a clinical basis and will be in discussion with the patient and clinical team.

It has been made clear that vital cancer services should remain where clinically agreed during the Covid-19 pandemic, this includes the use of private hospitals to treat these NHS patients. By utilising the private sector capacity we are able to provide a COVID free environment for urgent cancer procedures. The Golden Jubilee is also supporting the treatment of urgent cancer patients.

On 11th June 2020 the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) published on their website an article entitled COVID-19: The risk to AMRC charities.

https://www.amrc.org.uk/covid-19-the-risk-to-amrc-charities .

The published AMRC figures do not distinguish between cancer and other medical research charities.

On 30 th March Cancer Research UK released a press release that referred to an estimated 25 percent drop in fundraising income in FY 2020-21

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-release/2020-03-30-cancer-research-uk-estimates-25-per-cent-drop-in-fundraising-income-due-to-coronavirus?_ga=2.60513902.2117832912.1593763662-1469902633.1572445696

The impacts of COVID-19 on medical research are being considered by the UK Office for the Strategic Coordination of Health Research Board, which includes representation from the AMRC and the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office through the Chief Scientist for Health as well as from the other UK Health Departments, and UK research councils.

The UK Government has announced on 27 June that, from this autumn, UK universities will be able to access a series of UK Government grants and long-term, low interest loans covering up to 80% of each institution’s income losses caused by a decline in international students, up to the value of non-publicly funded research activity in that university. In addition, around £280 million UK Government funding will be made available to universities and research organisations for costed extensions of UK Research and Innovation and National Academy research projects impacted by the pandemic.

We welcome the recent announcement by the UK Government which builds on the Scottish Government’s commitment last month to provide an additional £75 million to ensure our universities can protect their world-leading research against the financial impact of COVID-19. However, we are concerned about the emphasis on loans in the UK Government’s stabilisation package, as not all universities will be in a position to take advantage of those. We will work with the UK Government not only to agree how this package will be implemented in Scotland, but also to address the long term sustainability of our sector to ensure it plays a key role in Scotland’s economic and social recovery.

Scotland’s testing capacity fluctuates on a daily basis and for this reason, and given daily fluctuation in NHS capacity, it is not possible to give a definitive figure for the proportion of testing capacity that comes from UK regional testing facilities.

We are working hard to ensure we maximise use of our daily capacity, as we expect the number of daily tests to increase as we roll out Test and Protect. NHS lab capacity is currently around 10,000 tests a day and around 8,000 at the weekend, and is supported by non-NHS labs including: University of Edinburgh, University of Aberdeen, and the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service.

In addition to this, we have further capacity through the Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow (run by the UK government), which has capacity to process approximately 20,000 tests a day. The Glasgow Lighthouse Laboratory may however process tests taken from across the UK.

As part of our activity we have worked with public and third sector partners to understand language and accessibility requirements, and have worked collaboratively to translate and distribute key coronavirus information. This has involved:

1. Digital marketing activity has been developed and undertaken to target those whose digital footprint highlights they are from a BAME community.

2. Scottish Government has been leading the coordination of translations of NHS Inform coronavirus content with NHS 24, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and NHS Lothian on a weekly basis from March to June. Content is translated into 12 different languages and formats.

3. Key promotional posters have been translated into various languages. For example, Household Isolation posters were translated into Polish, Mandarin, Arabic, BSL, Audio MP3, Easy Read, Kurdish, Sorani, Cantonese, Tigrinya, Vietnamese.

4. The two national door drops distributed by SG have been made available in a variety of language and accessible formats.

Scottish Government Policy teams are also working with relevant stakeholder and community groups to increase awareness of these resources and how to access them.

We do not collect data relating to learning disabilities of people receiving testing. Consent would have to be provided by the individual to allow collection of this data.

Every death from COVID-19 is a tragedy and the Scottish Government offers our condolences to every family that has been impacted, not least those of our frontline health and care staff.

We are working to fully understand the impact of COVID-19, taking into account individual risk factors which would make someone more vulnerable to COVID-19 such as age, ethnicity, underlying co-morbidities, where they live and the prevalence of the virus in their local area.

I have asked all stakeholders, including NHS Unions and NHS Scotland employers, to work in partnership to examine options for arriving at pay settlements for both the immediate and longer term. Stakeholders will work together to agree a timetable for this. In addition, and in consultation with a wide range of partners across the health and social care sector, we are taking forward a raft of measures designed to provide support to staff at this difficult time. Information on these can be found at our National Wellbeing Hub - www.promis.scot