Extra contact tracers to be recruited as part of £1m funding boost
An extra 25 contact tracers will be hired by the Scottish Government as part of an additional £1 million funding to train and recruit people to support quarantine me asures put in place by the government.
The announcement comes a day after the Scottish Government were criticised by Labour MSP Monica Lennon who told a national newspaper the progress in hiring people for the National Contact Tracing Centre was “woeful”.
In total, 63 people have been recruited to the NCTC, but the Scottish Government insist it has a pool of around 2,000 contact tracers to call on if required.
The Scottish Government have come under fire for a lack of enforcement of quarantine restrictions, with the chief constable Iain Livingstone saying just 200 people had been referred to police for breaching restrictions, and only 50 visited physically by officers.
Ms Lennon said :“63 new recruits is only 3 per cent of the original target. The NHS has a huge backlog and all existing staff should be free to get on with their jobs. Doubling up as contact tracers could put further pressure on our overstretched health service. This is a failure of recruitment.
“As NHS boards across the country sound the alarm over winter preparedness, the Scottish Government needs to be making contingency plans for how it is going to properly resource contact tracing as we move into the autumn.”
As part of its work, the NCTC contacts all passengers arriving from a country affected by quarantine restrictions via email and then follows up a random sample of around 600 passengers each week, according to the Scottish Government.
The new £1m will recruit and train up a further 25 contact tracers specifically aimed at supporting quarantine efforts.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “As levels of Covid-19 remains low in Scotland, we need to manage the risk of cases coming into the country, particularly from countries where infections are more prevalent than here. Contacting people is vital to ensure those who are required to quarantine for 14 days are doing so.”