Tracking for tests ‘naming and shaming’ is abandoned
Officials say data ‘increasingly incomplete’
TRACKING of how many coronavirus tests are being carried out in Scotland’s care homes that was partly aimed at “naming and shaming” underperforming NHS boards has been abandoned because it has become too unreliable.
It has been confirmed the Scottish Government will no longer publish the number of tests carried out on staff and residents, saying the data provided was considered “increasingly incomplete”.
Papers seen by The Herald raise further questions about the reliability of tracking of Covid-19 in care homes, as they state that information on whether homes had suspected cases was “incomplete” in some health board returns.
Last month the Government said it intended to publish board-byboard data on the number of tests conducted each week in a move that would highlight those health boards that failed to deliver the official policy of routinely testing care home staff for coronavirus after embarrassing Nicola Sturgeon.
The Government’s track and trace policy was set up to ensure there was no further spread of Covid-19 and there have been increasing calls to ensure it is fit-forpurpose as the country opens up to tourists this month and children return to school next month.
The Scottish Government is continuing to declare the number of care staff and residents being tested, even though it is accepted they are not an accurate picture either.
Scotland’s Health Secretary
Jeane Freeman announced on May 18 that all 53,000 care home staff would be offered weekly tests to help cut infections in homes, the site of around half of Scotland’s Covid-19 deaths.
But official figures show this has never happened – with the latest data showing just over 33,000 were reported to have been tested in the last full week.
However, the latest figures on all testing across Scotland through the NHS, mobile tests and drive throughs shows that in the last full week there were 30,828 checks in hospitals, care homes or the community. The numbers do not include postal tests.
While the Government has ramped up laboratory facilities to meet its target to have the ability to do 15,500 daily tests across Scotland to deliver Test and Protect, it has been running on a current average of 4,404 checks a day.
Scotland was testing at little over one-third of its capacity on the three days after the First Minister said the ability to screen had been ramped up in preparation for the national Test and Protect scheme going live on May 28.
The Scottish Conservatives have raised concerns about the apparent lack of testing and the veracity of the official figures.
Shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said: “The SNP’S pledge to test all care home staff routinely could not have been clearer.
“Yet since then it has attempted to obscure the process by not being clear or reliable about progress. Most people would take Jeane Freeman’s pledge for routine testing to mean all 50,000 care home staff were regularly offered a test.
“But this clearly hasn’t happened, and the secretive SNP is doing everything it can to stop people finding out.”
It comes as Ms Sturgeon warned the public to continue to be on their guard over Covid-19 as an additional 18 positive cases were confirmed, the highest figure we have seen in almost three weeks. She said the Government will be looking into this “very closely”.
In the first week of June, Ms Freeman had ordered board chief executives to send her new detailed plans immediately for delivering the policy of routine testing of care homes staff.
She told them their current plans
lacked “the level of detail required to give assurance to me and to the public that commitments on testing will be fulfilled”.
She demanded details of how many tests were needed in each board area, local capacity, how tests would be organised and how many were being performed.
The publication of board-by-board data on the number of tests conducted each week was aimed at highlighting any stragglers.
Official explanations stated the number of staff tested, provided by NHS boards, were an undercount because in some cases there was “incomplete data” while in another case there was a “reporting lag”.
The Government’s explanation for stopping the publication of the number of tests of care home staff provided by health boards was because it was considered “increasingly incomplete” due to the “number of testing routes now available beyond samples being analysed in NHS labs”.
It said it had decided to continue to publish the number of staff and residents that have been tested on a weekly basis from information supplied by the same health boards which it says provided a “fuller and more accurate picture of care home staff and resident testing”.
However in the past weeks the Scottish Government in separate documents has said even that data was not accurate describing it as an “undercount” because in some cases complete information was not collected for all care homes.
For the week beginning June 15, it said Lanarkshire captured 74 out of 93 care homes, and Grampian numbers were “incomplete” as data for care homes in Aberdeenshire is not captured. It accounted for around 45 per cent of all care homes in NHS Grampian.
For the week starting June 22, the Lanarkshire and Grampian numbers were again incomplete.
Meanwhile, Lothian reported there may be an “undercount due to a reporting lag” and that numbers of staff tested had to be inferred/ assumed from recorded social care portal usage”.
In the latest full week, starting June 29, official reports state the numbers of care home staff were still an undercount, with issues continuing in Lothian surrounding “data completeness and data quality”.
Across Scotland about 68,000 people receive home care support, 34,000 are residents in care homes and 125,000 are employed in these services. At least 135 of Scotland’s care homes still have at least one suspected Covid-19 case.