The Facts

 

Preparedness

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• In 2015, ‘Exercise Silver Swan’ was carried out across the public sector in Scotland to assess the country’s preparedness for a flu pandemic. It flagged up gaps in social care, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and storage for ‘mass fatalities’.

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• In March 2018, ‘Exercise Iris’ simulated a coronavirus outbreak in Scotland. It exposed a ‘clear gap’ and unease at the lack of clarity on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) availability, training and testing.

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• Concerns were raised about PPE stocks in Scotland by senior health chiefs in January 2020, before the first cases of COVID-19 were recorded here.

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• Nicola Sturgeon missed six UK Government Cobra meetings on coronavirus and didn’t join the sessions until March 2.

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The Outbreak

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• The first case of COVID-19 made public by the Scottish Government involved a patient from Tayside who had travelled from Italy and was announced on March 1.

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• However, a BBC investigation in May discovered there had been an outbreak in Edinburgh following a Nike conference in the city on February 26 and 27. At least 25 people subsequently contracted the virus, but the details were not made public – sparking accusations of a cover-up. 

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• It was reported that the North East of England’s ‘patient zero’ attended the conference in February and the infection was passed to a second person in Newcastle at a child’s birthday party.

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• Public Health England was alerted to a case associated with the Edinburgh conference on March 2, but the decision about what to make public was for the Scottish Government.

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Lockdown

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• Lockdown was introduced in Scotland on March 23. At this point, the Nike outbreak was still not public, and several major events had been held in Scotland:​

  • Scotland played France at Murrayfield in Edinburgh on March 8 in front of 67,000 fans.

  • Rangers played Bayer Leverkusen on March 12 in front of 47,000 fans.

  • The Scottish Government was also prepared to allow the Rangers v Celtic match to go ahead on March 15 – it was only cancelled by the SPFL.

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• A team of epidemiological scientists at University of Edinburgh concluded that more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths could have been prevented if Scotland had locked down two weeks earlier.

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Care Homes

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• More than 900 elderly patients were discharged from hospital into care homes in March, followed by over 500 patients in April. In most cases, this happened before a requirement for residents to be tested for COVID-19 was announced on April 21, to help stop the spread of the virus in care homes. The number of patients transferred was originally put at only 300 before the Scottish Government corrected its mistake.

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• In the period up to May 10, an international report from the  European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control revealed that 1,438 deaths involving COVID-19 had been reported from care homes in Scotland, representing 45% of all deaths. The corresponding figure for England was 21%, and 25% in Wales.[PN1]  The latest figures show that an almost identical number of people have died in care homes (1,956) and hospitals (1,955) since the outbreak began in Scotland.

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• A BBC investigation revealed that the Care Inspectorate received 30 red warnings that care homes did not have enough staff to properly care for their residents during lockdown, and 149 amber warnings that staffing was stretched.

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• For care home residents with coronavirus, Scottish Government guidance about sending them to hospital originally stated: "It is not advised that residents in long-term care are admitted to hospital for ongoing management but are managed within their current setting.” This later disappeared from the government’s website.

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PPE

 

• In April, more than 100 medical professionals wrote to the Scottish Government to express ‘grave concerns’ about the protective equipment they had been given.

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• The same month, almost half of high-risk environment nurses said they had been asked to re-use single-use PPE, according to a survey. The union Unite also reported that hospitals were having to reuse PPE.

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• A letter from the chief nursing officer initially claimed that masks were unnecessary, which Scottish trade unions warned could have left home and social carers receiving less protection than colleagues in other parts of the UK. UNISON Scotland secured agreement from the Scottish Government that the UK-wide guidance on PPE would apply.

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• In April, a leaked official report from the organisation responsible for delivering health and social care services in Edinburgh said the supply of PPE for key workers was still a ‘concern’.

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• A helpline for staff to report PPE shortages received more than 1,000 calls.

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• Surgical masks were being issued with expiry dates of April 2016, with labels covering the date with a revised expiry date of July 2021. In July, it emerged that thousands of out-of-date masks had to be destroyed by Scottish health boards after they were found to be disintegrating.

 

Shielding

 

• Over 150,000 people in Scotland were placed on a vulnerable shielding list. But people struggled to access vital home delivery services because the Scottish Government failed to share data with retailers.

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• Elderly Scots who did not fall into the shielding list were still advised to remain at home, but it was reported that people struggled to get home deliveries and weren’t receiving support from helplines.

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• Almost 18,000 people were sent advice which wrongly said shielding would end on June 8 and they could leave their homes. The actual date agreed by health experts was June 18.

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• More than 3,000 people were forced to shield unnecessarily during the coronavirus pandemic due to misidentification of cancers.

 

Testing

 

• On March 16, the World Health Organization issued guidance to countries to ‘test, test, test’. Professor Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, told MSPs in April that ‘we had the test but we did not use all the facilities that were available’. Professor Pennington – one of the world’s foremost microbiologists - also warned that care homes were at great risk. He was not brought in to offer direct advice to Scottish ministers.

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• In April, the First Minister set a target of 10,000 tests-a-day. By the end of the month, Scotland had tested fewer than half this target. It was reported that testing centres in Glasgow and Aberdeen were largely empty, with staff sent home early.

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• In May, Scotland was carrying out less than one third of the tests it had the capacity to do, and by June was on course to top half-a-million available tests which had not been used.

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• Routine testing for care home staff wasn’t introduced in Scotland until May, after the GMB union said ministers were ‘fiddling while the care home sector burns’. In the first week of June, only one in 16 Scottish care home staff were tested. Around half of all tests in Scotland are conducted through UK Government laboratories.

 

Quarantine

 

• In July, Nicola Sturgeon declined to rule out quarantining visitors from England. She claimed the ‘prevalence of the virus in Scotland, right now, is five times lower than it is in England’. She was later censured by the UK’s chief statistician for using incomplete and unpublished data.

 

• Scottish hoteliers warned that bookings were being cancelled following the First Minister’s incorrect claims.

 

• On July 20, the Scottish Government lifted quarantine rules on travellers from Spain. They were reimposed just days later.

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• Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said ‘approximately 20 per cent of travellers’ had been contacted by health officials to check if they had developed coronavirus symptoms. It later emerged that not a single spot check took place in June or the first week of July. Mr Yousaf later corrected his error.

 

Schools

 

• National clinical director Jason Leitch said on March 13 he could 'absolutely guarantee there is no plan right now, and no substantive rumours, that we're going to close schools next week’. On March 18, the First Minister announced that schools would close.

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• In June, Education Secretary John Swinney said part-time schooling from August was the ‘best’ possible plan and to do otherwise would ‘be playing with the public health of individuals’. He said schools were ‘unlikely’ to return to normal for the duration of the upcoming year. Ten days later, he said pupils would return full-time in August.

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• Due to COVID-19, pupils in Scotland were unable to sit exams. In August, it emerged that the grades system disadvantaged poorer pupils. The government later performed a U-turn and agreed to accept teacher estimates of scores.

 

Deaths

 

• A total of 2,491 people have died who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Scotland, with 4,213 deaths registered in Scotland where it was mentioned on the death certificate. A country’s ‘excess mortality’ rate shows the impact of the coronavirus, and there have been nearly 5,000 more deaths than would be expected in a normal year, based on a five-year average. 

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• Scotland has recorded the third highest excess death rate in Europe, behind only England and Spain, according to official data up to the week ending May 29.