The Scottish Government’s testing strategy during the coronavirus
pandemic is to be investigated by the Health and Sport Committee.
The Parliament Committee is seeking views to find out what role
testing should play in helping to tackle the pandemic, and what
infrastructure is required to deliver the Government’s test,
trace and isolate strategy it aims to introduce by the end of
May.
Over the coming weeks, the Committee is undertaking a series of
short inquiries into the Scottish Government’s response to the
pandemic. On Thursday they will look at the issue of PPE and
they are also looking into the Government’s preparedness to
deal with any potential ‘second wave’ of the virus, or future
pandemic.
This week, the Committee also launched an inquiry into the
particular issues faced by care homes during this crisis.
, Health and Sport
Committee Convener, said:
“The Government’s testing strategy is absolutely pivotal in
tackling this crisis and helping to ease in any meaningful way
the restrictions on our lives we are all facing.
“The Scottish Government have outlined their wish to adopt a
test, trace and isolate strategy from the end of May but we
want to make sure the infrastructure is in place to help
achieve this.
“We want to look into testing capacity across Scotland and the
introduction of antibody tests.
“We’ve seen the success of other countries testing strategies,
such as South Korea, Germany and New Zealand, and we want to
investigate the science behind our testing approach and whether
more could and should have been done to lessen the terrible
impact of this virus on our society.”
The Committee’s coronavirus testing questionnaire is
available here.
It closes on 18th May.
Background
The care homes survey is available here.
It closes on 20th May.
