ALL CARERS WILL NOW BE TESTED
But residents at Scottish homes could still slip through the net
CRUCIAL coronavirus testing will finally be expanded to all care home workers in Scotland – but not to all residents.
The Scottish Government agreed to roll out testing to all care staff, whether they have symptoms or not and even if there has not been an outbreak at their work.
Ministers announced action after weeks of concerns by care home operators, trade unions and opposition politicians that staff may be unknowingly spreading the virus to residents.
Yesterday, trade unions, care operators, nurses and health experts united to sign a joint letter demanding that all care home residents and staff are routinely tested.
It was also claimed that unused capacity could be used to ensure all staff and residents are tested ‘within weeks, if not days’.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, 45 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths in Scotland have been in care homes.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: ‘We will now move to a position where all care home staff are offered testing, regardless of symptoms and regardless of whether there is an ongoing outbreak in the care home they work.
This testing will have to be carried out on a repeating basis to be effective and will help us to protect residents and staff themselves.’
Yesterday, a joint letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson signed by 14 individuals including representatives of staff groups and the care industry as well as health and infection experts called for the Scottish and UK governments to convene an urgent ‘virtual summit’ to agree a joint testing plan.
The letter, brought together by the Our Scottish Future thinktank, warns ‘insufficient cooperation’ between the two governments is hampering efforts.
It says: ‘Unlike the rest of the UK there is no commitment as yet to test every care home worker and every care home resident.
‘It is a dereliction of duty that even now all care residents and workers – as well as all NHS workers and other key workers unable to practise social distancing effectively – are not automatically being tested on a regular basis as part of their daily working practices.
‘Even key workers with symptoms are struggling to get tested because the poorly integrated system of sample collection that has been created in Scotland forces many unwell people to travel for hours to get a test.’
It says that a mass expansion of testing is crucial ‘if Scotland is to be able to move out of lockdown safely’.
Signatories of the letter included representatives of the Usdaw, Unison, Unite and GMB trade unions, as well as the Royal College of Nursing Scotland and bosses of care homes.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown said the impact on Scotland’s care homes was a ‘national scandal that has become an international tragedy’.
Miss Freeman said yesterday the expansion of testing to all care home staff was being introduced following new clinical advice.
Asked why it has taken so long to make the change, she said: ‘What we have done here is what we have done all along – gathered the right clinical views, making sure there is time for that and the evidence, and then taken the decision that is right at the time. The evidence that I have relied on in order to make that decision is that the route for the virus into a care home primarily will be through those who work in the care home because they will be the people going in and out most from the community.’
She said there was ‘no good clinical or ethical reason for testing residents who are not symptomatic’.
The Scottish Tories highlighted that current unused capacity allows an extra 12,000 tests a day and said that would allow 53,500 staff and 36,000 residents in care homes to be quickly tested.
On the expansion of testing to all staff, Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw said: ‘This still falls well short of the comprehensive action
‘Staff with symptoms struggle to get tests’
needed to protect care workers and those they care for.
‘What we need is a commitment that, in addition to care home staff, all residents and community care workers will also be included in a repeat testing policy.
‘Given the scale of the challenges being faced in our care sector and the tragic loss of life in care homes and among care workers, nothing less than a 100 per cent testing policy, extending to all staff and residents, should be acceptable.’
Meanwhile, Gary Smith general secretary of the GMB trade union said: ‘The Scottish Government should end the scandal of the fact that workers in care who test positive are left in poverty if they’re off work as a result of testing positive.
‘We have workers in the private sector that are terrified to get tested positive because if they’re put off their work, they’re living on subsistence levels of money.’