Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Lagging behind on virus testing
Whilst the majority of people work from home to slow and reduce the spread of Covid-19, many others still have to go out to work.
Our key workers provide health and social care, food, transport, childcare and waste collection. The work they do is front and centre of our minds.
We all express our appreciation on a Thursday evening but plainly that is not enough. Many of our key workers are among the lowest paid in society and this pandemic has demonstrated the need to ensure they are fairly rewarded for the contribution they make to society.
Testing and the availability of personal protective equipment ( PPE) have dominated the news for the past six weeks – and rightly so. It has been a great failing that frontline staff have not been provided with adequate and sufficient levels of PPE.
Despite Scottish government assurances they had sorted the initial problems, we have been inundated with workers concerned that they do not have adequate PPE.
Even the government has been forced to admit their email inbox has received more than 1600 enquiries in the short time it has been open.
In March, the First Minister informed the Scottish Parliament that Scotland has some of the greatest testing capacity of any country in the world, per capita. That simply wasn’t true.
Currently, we have tested only one in every 90 citizens. Norway and Denmark, countries with a similar population size to ours, have tested three times as many people on a per capita basis.
We are lagging behind almost every other European nation in testing and every day falling behind the UK average. I am disappointed that the Scottish government choose to wilfully ignore the advice of the World Health Organisation to “test, test, test”.
The human tragedy of Covid-19 is still not fully known, and it may take many years to comprehend, but what is clear is that too many families have been bereaved.
We are all especially shocked by the level of deaths in care homes, both because of Covid-19 and as care home residents weren’t being treated for other conditions.
It is essential that we provide care homes with the proper PPE; that we regularly test staff and residents and allow residents to be treated in hospitals.
The Scottish government cannot claim it was not aware of how to respond to a pandemic like coronavirus; a government report from four years ago identified issues in social care and the provision of PPE. We also saw the virus spreading and knew when it would hit Scotland.
The first duty of a government is to protect its citizens. That is why I will be calling for a full public inquiry so that we learn the lessons from this pandemic.
I can be contacted by calling 01236 423555 or emailing Richard. Leonard. MSP@Parliament.Scot.
Thank you for everything you are doing to stop the spread of the virus; stay safe.