System ‘watered down’ to save cash

COVID-19 contact tracing was watered down after the Scottish Government lobbied for cutbacks to save money.

The system to track down those who may have been infected from a single ‘superspreader’ was credited with stamping out the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic in Scotland with the loss of only 69 lives.

Officials traced the contacts of not just confirmed victims but those who were suspected of having the disease as well.

At the time, Nicola Sturgeon – then Health Secretary – said probable infections were being earmarked because ‘our top priority is to prevent and disrupt the spread of infection’. She told Holyrood: ‘Our extensive contact tracing of suspected cases – something that not all countries do as systematically as we do – puts us in a potentially strong position to learn more about the virus and how it behaves.

‘That, of course, is vital in helping to shape our future response to it.’

The Cabinet Office conducted a review in 2010 of the UK’s response to the swine flu strain and asked for evidence from the devolved administrations.

In answer to the question: ‘What would you wish to do differently in another pandemic?’, the Scottish Government submission states: ‘The containment phase worked well in trying

stem the spread of the virus in the early stages… We do need to reflect on the length of this phase, however, as it placed significant pressure on services.’

An NHS Scotland report later that year also recommended in ‘managing a future pandemic’ that ‘Scottish Government in collaboration with its UK equivalents should review the cost effectiveness of the control measures put in place during containment’.

However, at the start of the latest pandemic, Covid-19 trackers were told to only deal with those with a definite diagnosis, potentially delaying their work by up to 48 hours until lab test results arrived. More than 3,500 Scots have since died as the virus swept the country.