Virus facilities have tested 5,000 people
CORONAVIRUS testing facilities across Scotland have already tested
5,000 people.
This includes a new facility at Glasgow Airport, which opened in a long-stay car park on Sunday, and will prioritise testing NHS frontline staff.
The drive-through facility is by invitation only, for those who are priority testing.
Professor Jason
Leitch, the Scottish Government’s national clinical director, told BBC Radio Scotland: “We’ve now tested 5,000 health and social care workers across the country, partly using work you’ll have seen on the TV, and places in
Fife and Tayside.
“It’s part of the UK approach to testing but we’re responsible for who gets in and out of that service. So, we take priority people and put them through that first, and as that expands we’ll be able to increase that list.”
Mr Leitch also took the opportunity to deny that patients being treated for coronavirus symptoms in hospitals were being made to sign do-not-resuscitate orders.
He said: “There is nobody being forced to sign do-not-resuscitate orders. There is nobody being forced to sign what we would call anticipatory care plans.
“What people are doing, as this disease spreads misery across the country, is people are having conversations with families, correctly, about what they would want at the end of their lives.
“That’s an acceptable and good thing to do whether you have cancer or you’re planning for some other outcome.”
Wednesday saw the biggest number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK – 938 people – but Mr Leitch said that number is still likely to rise in the coming days.
He said: “We are rising towards the peak. Deaths yesterday were an astonishing reminder of the difficulty of this virus. This virus is nasty – it’s really nasty. And we have no treatment for this virus.
“It’s very important people realise that what intensive care is doing is supporting each individual to get over the virus with their own immune system.
“But we have no tablets, no infusion of drug that helps you through this virus.”