ScotGov - Testing Shambles
Scottish Ministers promised to open three new testing labs by October 2020 to help bring Covid-19 under control.
The Sunday Post reports that these new facilities will not now be in place until 2021 - meanwhile care homes are still waiting for seven to nine days for their test results to be returned.
Linda Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University, told the Sunday Post:
“It’s concerning that there are further delays to these regional hubs. We will have a spike in cases around Christmas and shortly after that period even if restrictions are not lifted. It’s going to be a tough ask to get the whole country to follow the guidance at Christmas. But we really need that capacity (in regional hubs) for screening asymptomatic groups. There are key groups that need to be routinely tested, such as NHS staff, but there are still challenges.”
Read the full story via the link below to the paper.
News Special: Two of three new NHS testing labs will not be ready on schedule as care homes warn quicker turnaround is crucial to prevent another disaster
Two of the three new NHS Covid testing labs due to open by the end of the year will not be ready on time, according to a scientists’ leader.
The regional hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are said to be vital to speed turnaround times for routine tests of care home staff, which have been beset by delays of up to 10 days.
The Scottish Government originally pledged to open three labs by October to increase Scotland’s testing capacity by 22,000 per day but that was pushed back to December.
However, scientist Allan Wilson, who is president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, an industry body for UK lab workers, has told The Post that is unrealistic. He said: “The Glasgow lab is on schedule for going live in December. The other two in Edinburgh and Aberdeen are going to be into early next year.
“It takes a lot of time and effort to set these up. They are focusing resources on one, getting it right and then moving on, rather than trying to set up three. There is a lot of resources needed to do three so they are just doing one first and then they’ll use the same model for the other two.”
Mr Wilson added: “Politicians should promise less and deliver more. There is a driven desire in a lot of politicians to give you the good news but sometimes you’ve just got to be realistic about what is actually deliverable.”
Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, the membership organisation for private care homes, said: “These regional testing hubs are fundamentally important to keep people safe. We are working on the assumption all three will be open by the middle of December. We remain concerned that residents are unsafe because we are not getting testing right.
“We are still hearing stories of care homes waiting seven to nine days to get results. We are hearing stories of entire care homes’ tests coming back inconclusive, which leads us to the analysis that the samples were corrupt because they were not processed quickly enough. It is unacceptable that we are still not getting testing right.”
One of Scotland’s largest care home groups, Balhousie, told The Post it would trial rapid response tests because staff regularly wait more than a week for the results of PCR tests from overstretched labs.
A spokeswoman for Balhousie, which runs 25 care homes, said: “With community transmissions high and Covid-related deaths in care homes rising again, it’s vital that nobody, least of all the Scottish Government, takes their foot off the gas when it comes to Covid testing. The turnaround in our own staff test results has improved, but not to anything close to what it should be. This week, out of 897 Covid tests carried out among staff, 34% had still not been returned on Friday. That still poses extreme risks to our residents and care home teams so we have been researching rapid response testing and have plans to trial the latest technology in rapid response testing.”
A review of the Scottish Government’s testing strategy published on October 23 estimated that Scotland would need around 54,000 tests per day by December 2020. The target is 65,000 tests per day.
Last month there was an available capacity of around 30,000 tests, according to the testing review – 20,000 through the UK Government’s Lighthouse lab and 10,000 through Scotland’s network of NHS labs.
Public health professor Linda Bauld, of Edinburgh University, said: “Throughout the pandemic testing has been the Achilles heel in the UK response, in that we were slow to build up capacity, it was fragmented and there has been bumps in the road at most stages.
“It’s concerning that there are further delays to these regional hubs. We will have a spike in cases around Christmas and shortly after that period even if restrictions are not lifted. It’s going to be a tough ask to get the whole country to follow the guidance at Christmas. But we really need that capacity (in regional hubs) for screening asymptomatic groups. There are key groups that need to be routinely tested, such as NHS staff, but there are still challenges.”
The timetable for opening three regional testing hubs has slipped several times. In the summer Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said the facilities would be open by October.
She told MSPs: “We are also trying to increase the pace of work on the three regional hubs that we have always planned to introduce from October and to bring those forward where we can.”
However, in October a spokeswoman for NHS procurement arm National Services Scotland (NSS) told the Post assessments to ensure the hubs have the necessary equipment were incomplete.
Care Homes - Thrown Under The Bus (01/09/20)
Peter Swindon at the Sunday Post broke another great news story at the weekend about the breakdown of testing in Scotland's care homes.
Tony Banks, Chairman of Balhousie Care Group, said that only 6 results were returned from 846 staff last week after the Scottish Government switched the focus of testing away from care homes and onto to schools.
Tony Banks told the Sunday Post:
“Our staff are anxious, our managers are in the dark and our residents are at risk of being exposed to asymptomatic staff.”
“That’s a cruel waiting game to play on anyone, and it’s unacceptable.”
The latest scandal follows hot on the heels of another Sunday Post exclusive which revealed that hospital patients had been discharged into care homes, earlier this year, despite testing positive for Covid-19.
Care Homes - Thrown Under The Bus (30/08/20)
Scotland's health minister Jeane Freeman welcomes the 'tremendous progress' made in discharging hospital patients into local care homes - the snag being that many of these patients had already tested positive for Covid-19.
Care Homes - Thrown Under The Bus (28/08/20)
ScotGov - Testing Shambles (12/11/20)
The Daily Record reports on the failings of Scotland's 'Test and Protect' system which failed to contact thousands of people who should have been self-isolation following a positive test for Covid-19.
ScotGov - Testing Shambles (11/11/20)
The Scottish Sun reports that the government's Test and Protect system is badly underperforming.
Now this comes as no surprise to me because the testing regime in Scotland's care homes has been a shambles for months and there are still long delays in care homes getting test results back which puts the safety of their residents and staff in jeopardy.
I've also have to quarantine twice in the past six months following trips abroad, yet not once have I been contacted by Public Health Scotland to check that I was following the rules - or to ask if I needed any assistance.
ScotGov - Testing Shambles (01/11/20)
The Sunday Times reports that the Scottish Government is likely to refuse requests for 'anonymised' information on the discharge of hospital patients into Scotland's care homes.
"The PHS report does not disclose the hospitals from which patients were discharged, nor the care homes that accepted them. The Scottish government is expected to resist demands for the information to be released on data protection grounds, but lawyers indicated last night that court orders will be used to obtain full medical records from GPs, care homes and health boards."
Sounds like a battle ministers are bound to lose because residents, their families and care providers should surely be entitled to have this information without dragging the Scottish Government into court.
Nurse raises alert over advice to Scottish health boards to halt over-70s testing
Health secretary Jeane Freeman is under pressure - Photo ANDREW COWAN
Guidance allowing Scottish health boards to relax Covid testing of the over-70s “raised eyebrows” among NHS officials and prompted a nurse to blow the whistle over concerns for the safety of staff and elderly patients.
In April, Nicola Sturgeon ordered that all patients over 70 should be tested on admission to hospital and every four days throughout their stay. “That will help us identify if the virus is being transmitted in the hospital,” she said. More than 80% of all deaths from Covid have occurred in the over-70s.
Yet, throughout October, NHS Ayrshire and Arran acted upon updated advice from chief nursing officer Fiona McQueen that four-day tests could be stopped, if deemed to be in the best interest of patients and taking local prevalence into account. A frontline worker raised fears with the Scottish Conservatives that elderly patients in intensive care were no longer being swabbed and tested after admission. The health board confirmed on Friday that routine testing ceased on October 9 following the guidance but will be reinstated tomorrow.
It was unclear last night if other boards had relaxed testing, although the country’s largest, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said it had not. A well-placed source at another Scottish health board said the advice had “raised eyebrows” and struck officials as “very odd”.
“It has been clear we are approaching a second wave of this virus for some time, so it seems extraordinary that guidance was issued allowing routine testing of over 70 year olds to be halted,” said Donald Cameron, the Scottish Tory shadow health secretary.
“We have only found out because a staff nurse on the frontline blew the whistle. We need to know if the SNP government were aware of this and whether it was limited to one health board or occurred across the country.”
The disclosure, which will heap further pressure on embattled health secretary Jeane Freeman, comes amid mounting legal actions for alleged negligence that exposed elderly patients and health workers to the coronavirus, with the Scottish government, health boards and care homes in the firing line.
Mary Reid, pictured with her daughter Jane White and sons on her 89th birthday, later died in Lindsayfield Lodge. Jane said she would never have moved her if she had thought it unsafe
A report by Public Health Scotland (PHS) revealed last week that 3,599 elderly patients were discharged from hospitals into care homes between March 1 and April 21. In line with clinical guidance at the time, only 650 patients who showed signs of illness were tested for Covid and of these, 78 patients were found to be infected.
The PHS report does not disclose the hospitals from which patients were discharged, nor the care homes that accepted them. The Scottish government is expected to resist demands for the information to be released on data protection grounds, but lawyers indicated last night that court orders will be used to obtain full medical records from GPs, care homes and health boards.
Thompsons, a Glasgow-based law firm, is currently handling 25 claims and has set up a Covid unit to handle cases.
Among those taking legal action are the family of Mary Reid, 89, who moved to Lindsayfield Lodge care home in East Kilbride on March 23. She tested positive for Covid on April 23 and died six weeks later. Reid’s daughter, Jane White, said: “I would never have put her in there if I thought she would be in danger.”
Northcare, which operates Lindsayfield Lodge, confirmed that the care home accepted seven new admissions in March, including one patient from a hospital. “We were not informed if the resident had been tested prior to leaving hospital,” said Margaret Sawers, Northcare’s owner.
In a statement on Friday, NHS Ayrshire and Arran said that “serial testing” of inpatients aged over 70 had stopped on October 9 “based on guidance from the chief nursing officer”.
A spokeswoman added: “Current evidence within Ayrshire and Arran indicates increased transmission of Covid-19 within the community. Therefore, from November 2, we will be reinstating Covid-19 serial testing arrangements for inpatients aged over 70 years of age.”
ScotGov - Testing Shambles (31/10/20)
CORONAVIRUS
Staff were ‘likely source’ of Covid in Scottish care homes
Asymptomatic staff were more likely to have brought coronavirus into care homes than hospital discharges, Public Health Scotland says - Photo EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS
Care home staff are more likely to have unwittingly caused the huge wave of deaths of elderly residents in April than patients transferred from hospital, government statisticians have found.
A long-awaited report into care home deaths by Public Health Scotland, the Scottish government agency, found “no statistical evidence that hospital discharges were associated with care home outbreaks”.
Staff and professional visitors, such as GPs and external contractors, were more likely to have been the source of infection, Public Health Scotland said.
Care home staff only became eligible for routine testing in mid-May, three weeks after routine testing of hospital patients being discharged into care homes began.
Nicola Sturgeon stressed that staff should not be “blamed” for bringing coronavirus into care homes as they would not have known they were infected without tests. The first minister has yet to deliver on a pledge to test all care home visitors.
Care home visiting was restricted to professional visitors only, so families would not have been the source of infection in March and April.
Nearly half of the 4,482 deaths in Scotland have taken place in care homes. Deaths are rising again, with one fifth of the 226 deaths recorded in the past four weeks taking place in care homes.
The Public Health Scotland report states: “The analysis does not find statistical evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks.
“We lack consistent data on positive tests from staff working in care homes. This is primarily a result of changing practice in terms of testing. In March and early April, tests were only performed on those being admitted to hospital and testing of care home staff in the community was rare. We therefore have minimal staff data in the period when most outbreaks started, and therefore did not include staff testing in the analysis.
“Although care home size is the strongest predictor of care home outbreaks, we do not have data to explore why this is so. Care home size is a marker for the number of non-residents coming into the care home.
“During Covid-19, this includes staff and professional visitors coming into care homes.”
Ms Sturgeon said she only became aware that people without symptoms could infect others shortly before hospital patient testing was introduced on April 22.
The Times analysed minutes of the Scottish government Covid-19 advisory group, the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and the World Health Organisation and found a wealth of evidence about asymptomatic transmission from March onwards.
The latest Public Health Scotland report corroborates international findings that about one in five people who tested positive for Covid-19 was asymptomatic.
There were 4,807 patients discharged from care homes between March 1 and May 31. Ages ranged from 19 to 105 years old, with the average being 81.
Three quarters of patients — or 3,599 — were discharged before mandatory testing was introduced. Only one in five was tested for Covid-19 before that date.
More than one in ten patients that did receive a test — 78 out of 650 — was found to have Covid-19. After April 22 the proportion of patients testing positive prior to discharge rose to one in five — 278 out of 1,215.
An NHS source confirmed patients with coronavirus symptoms were “highly unlikely” to have been eligible for discharge. Most of these positive patients — 233 out of 278 — subsequently tested negative prior to discharge after a follow-up test.
Speaking at her daily briefing, the first minister said: “The most significant factor in outbreaks was the size of care home. That is not blaming care homes and it is not blaming staff. It is simply recognising that in bigger care homes there are perhaps more interactions, there’s perhaps more of a risk of community transmission getting into the care home, so we have to think and about how we work with and support larger care homes to better mitigate that.”
She added: “We now do routine weekly testing of care home staff and we plan now to extend that testing to designated visitors to care home and to a wider range of professionals who enter care homes regularly.”
Care Home Testing Shambles (12/10/20)
The Labour MSP Neil Findlay gets to the heart of the matter in this BBC report by highlighting the fact that it took six full days for a care home in West Lothian to be tested for Covid-19.
An incredible 28 staff were still waiting on results of their tests, some of which had been carried out nine days earlier, leaving care home residents and fellow workers vulnerable to infection.
The health minister Jeanne Freeman is reported as saying that the Scottish Government will investigate any issues with testing.
But the issues are staring the Scottish Government in the face - test results are taking far to long to process and not enough priority is being given to protecting the most vulnerable from the threat of Covid-19.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54456819
Covid in Scotland: Test 'shambles' at West Lothian care home
Testing for Covid-19 at a care home hit with an outbreak of the virus is a "shambles", an MSP has claimed.
Labour's Neil Findlay said the first case was detected at Redmill Care Home in West Lothian on 25 September, but it took six days for a whole home testing regime to be organised.
He said 28 staff and 20 residents were awaiting results from tests, some of which were carried out nine days ago.
The health secretary promised to investigate any issues with testing.
The Redmill Care Home in East Whitburn is one of two in the NHS Lothian area currently dealing with Covid clusters.
At Redmill, which is run by HC-One, 55 residents and staff have tested positive, while at Milford House in Edinburgh there have been 31 positive test results.
The health board has said a "small number" of people have died but will not give precise figures because of patient confidentiality.
Worried relatives
Lothians MSP Mr Findlay told Holyrood he had been contacted by both staff and relatives of families at Redmill.
He said: "Today 28 staff are still waiting on results, six staff are waiting on a test.
"Some tests couldn't be given because labels didn't come with kits. Twenty residents are awaiting results, some people have not had results despite being tested on September 28, nine days ago.
"One staff member received three sets of results, one received someone else's results and 20 results were returned negative, but with no information with them as to whom they belonged to."
Mr Findlay continued: "I really hope the same has not happened at Milford House because staff and residents deserve so much better than what appears to be a shambles with the testing regime."
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman gave a breakdown of the cases, saying 37 staff and 18 residents at Redmill Care Home had tested positive while at Milford House 18 staff and 13 residents had received positive test results.
She said Mr Findlay had raised "serious issues", but that this did not tie up with the information she had received about the homes, and she promised to investigate further.
A spokeswoman from HC One said: "We have experienced several challenges with the testing programme at Redmill Care Home, including delays and erroneous results being returned, and detailed this to Mr Findlay earlier today.
"We are very grateful for Mr Findlay's support and the immediate action he has taken to help us resolve these challenges.
"Our priority is to work with all interested parties to make sure that testing is completed in a timely and accurate fashion and that we can collectively tackle this outbreak for the benefit of residents and colleagues."
Nearly half of those who have died with coronavirus in Scotland have died in care homes, according to official figures.
Scottish Government - Testing Shambles (19/10/20)
The Scottish Government tried to pull a fast one on Twitter yesterday by blaming the latest testing shambles on the UK Government Lighthouse network - see tweet below.
Scottish Government @scotgov
Today’s testing data does not represent the total daily number of tests and cases as there has been a processing delay as a result of a capacity issue with the UK Government Lighthouse network, including Glasgow. For more information
https://bit.ly/35d5NKj
ScotGov and Care Homes (29/10/20)
Scottish Ministers are vehemently denying any link between the policy of rapidly discharging hospital patients into Scotland's care homes at the beginning of the Covid epidemic back in March 2020.
The conclusion of a long awaited report (from NHS Scotland) is that there is no statistical evidence to link the rise in care home cases to the discharge of hospital patients.
Yet common sense would tell any reasonable person that welcoming new residents into a care home without knowing that they had tested positive for Covid-19 was a 'disaster waiting to happen'.
Between 1 March and 21 April 2020 only 650 out of the 3,599 hospital patients discharged were actually tested - only 18% of the total - and 78 (12%) of the 650 tested positive for Covid-19.
Between 22 April and 31 May 2020 the situation improved - 1493 out of 1,605 discharges were tested (93%), yet 45 patients were still discharged from hospital into care homes without testing negative for Covid-19 - which sounds like civil servant speak that they were still Covid positive.
See post below dated 28/10/20 and the official NHS Scotland press release.
So all in all a sorry tale and the most amazing thing is that the Scottish Government denies any link to its discharge policy when, in the first wave, a mere 18% of discharged patients were actually tested.
To add insult to injury the Scottish Government is now suggesting that care home staff and professional visitors, such as GPs and external contractors, were more likely to have been the source of infection - yet no statistical evidence whatsoever has produced to back up this theory.
More to follow.
Coronavirus Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon under fire for care home transfers
By David Bol - The Herald
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon
DEMANDS have been made for an urgent public inquiry into the Scottish Government’s “reckless” decision to transfer more than 100 positive coronavirus patients into care homes – with one official admitting that it is “likely that hospital discharges were the source of introduction of infection in a small number of cases”.
Nicola Sturgeon has been told that it is “essential that lessons are urgently learned” after a stark report from Public Health Scotland revealed that 113 people who had tested positive for Covid-19 were discharged from hospitals into care homes between March and May without first receiving a negative result.
