Contact tracing pledge has not been met even by half, Freeman admits

Scotland has just 874 contact tracers available despite a pledge 2,000 would be in place by June, the Health Secretary has revealed.

Jeane Freeman said under half of the target number of trained contract tracers are available across all 14 health boards and Public Health Scotland’ s national contact tracing centre.

In May, Ms Freeman insisted the Scottish Government would meet or exceed its target of 2,000 people who could trace those who infected Covid-19 patients had been in contact with.

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Scotland, she said: “We will get to that number by the beginning of June and there may be more than that.”

Asked by Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Bail lie how many are now employed, Ms Freeman wrote “approximately 874 staff capable of undertaking contact tracing activity were available for deployment” on 10 September.

In her written answer to Ms Baillie, Ms Freeman said Ms Freeman recruitment is “ongoing”.

She wrote: “We keep contact tracing capacity under active review, in line with modelling undertaken by Public Health Scotland, with all boards required to maintain a total national capacity commensurate with demand .”

According to the Scottish Government ,191 NHS staff trained as contact tracers are available in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area; 96 in Lothian; 72 in Ayrshire and Arran; 55 in Grampian; 53 in Tayside; 42 in the Forth Valley; 36 in Fife; 33 in the Borders; 31 in Lanarkshire, and 19 in both the Highland and Dumfries and Galloway.

On Scotland’s islands, 13 contact tracers are based within NHS Shetland, 12 in the Western Isles and six in Orkney.

A total of 196 are available for deployment by the National Contact Tracing Centre.