The Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been risible in the UK. This has been viable for all to see, has been explored by the media in great detail – and in that press conference, the UK Government sold it’s last shred of self-worth down the river to protect the Prime Minister’s brain. The result of this has been a Conservative polling lead of +24 being reduced to just +3 in a matter of weeks.
In Scotland, however, none of this has happened. The Scottish Government hasn’t lost credibility and poll ratings, and questions are not being asked as to its handling of the crisis. Nicola Sturgeon’s daily briefings (and they are always Nicola Sturgeon’s daily briefings) are always controlled and clear. While the UK was preparing to “Stay Alert”, Scotland was still to “Stay Home”. Scotland has coronavirus under control…doesn’t it?
The Nike Conference
The question of the Nike Conference held in Edinburgh at the end of February has been a dogged one. It was discovered in early May and Ian Murray MP has, since then been trying to get the bottom of the matter (despite being told it isn’t any of his business). The initial response to “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the Nike Conference” was that privacy concerns prevented it. Once it was agreed that that didn’t answer the question at all (since that would mean that every update on Coronavirus incident numbers would be a breach of privacy), the answer then became that it may have been a mistake not to share the information, but the proper contact tracing had been done, so it was OK.
But then it emerged that hotel staff hadn’t been contacted to confirm the COVID-19 case; and other delegates in the hotel at the same time hadn’t been contacted; and the staff in the kilt-fitters used for the conference hadn’t been contacted; and the tour guides used by the delegation hadn’t been contacted; and colleagues at Nike stores (who were ordered to give their stores a deep clean in March – shortly after said conference – but not told why) hadn’t been contacted. So, no-one is really sure who was actually contacted.
Nicola Sturgeon, however, has nothing more to add and feels it is time to move on.
Care Homes
The next issue that has attracted attention was the position with Care Home discharges. The initial concern when COVID-19 was due to hit was that the NHS would be overwhelmed, and so capacity had to be increased in the NHS to cope with the anticipated increase in demand (including the opening of the Scottish Nightingale hospital, named the NHS Louisa Jordan which, thankfully, has not yet had to be used).
The Scottish Government advice position in early March was that it was “…not advised that residents in long term care are admitted to hospital”. This weekend, after families who had recently lost family members due to hesitation to admit those in care-homes to hospitals, a spokesman said “Our guidance has never advised that care home residents should not be transferred to hospital“. This is at best a generous literal interpretation of the words on the page, and at worst, a cynical re-writing of the position.
But the issue with people entering hospitals was only the beginning. The ever-present problem of ‘bed-blocking’, or ‘delayed discharge’ (i.e people – generally older people – being kept in hospital longer than is medically required, usually due to delay in putting together the necessary social care package for them) was going to be a NHS bed capacity issue. It is in the discharging of patients, particularly patients being admitted into a care home setting, where the most questions seem to be asked and un-answered.
It emerged in late April 2020 that patients were being discharged to care homes without being tested, but the scale only became clear weeks later. To be fair, it isn’t fair to blame the Health Secretary for this, as she said that she hadn’t seen the latest guidance from her department. The same then appeared to be the case for new non-hospital admissions. Then when challenged about this by Richard Leonard on 27th May 2020, Sturgeon responded that, this matter was being raised with the ‘benefit of hindsight’ and that “…the fact that (Richard Leonard) wasn’t raising those questions then that he is now shows we cannot apply hindsight and change what we knew at the time”. This would have been a fair comment, of course, had it been publicly known what was happening at the time. It then turned out that those in the care sector had been raising concerns about testing since the beginning, and hitting brick walls. John Swinney, Deputy FM (and the SNP) also seemed to confirm that these people were piled out of hospitals in an effort to reduce bed-blocking and delayed discharge – not for medical reasons.
But where are we now? More people have now died in Scottish care homes than in Scottish hospitals (though things aren’t great there either) and the promised care home sick-pay fund still hasn’t been set up, which has a chilling effect on staff who don’t want to be tested in case they text positive and cannot work. And the lack of testing of residents was because, to be fair, Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t aware that people without symptoms of the virus could pass it on to others. The First Minster said that she had never received such medical advice, but the Health Minister believed that the First Minister had received such advice. Sadly, we can’t check to see what the medical advice actually said because, apparently, no written advice was given.
Meanwhile, over 1,300 people were sent to care homes prior to test results, and you were more likely to die in a care home than a hospital and over 900 people are believed to have caught COVID-19 in Scottish hospitals (though Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, thought this figure was only 125 just on Thursday).
Nicola Sturgeon, however, believes that England is under-reporting care home deaths…so things aren’t that bad in Scotland really.
Testing Roll-Out
The one thing that everyone can agree on, however, is that the key to moving forward, short of a vaccine being discovered is testing. This is particularly true as it appears that Scotland’s excess death rate appears to be higher than Italy’s, and only marginally below the UK as a whole.
As discussed above, there were calls to ensure widespread testing of health and care staff early on, and re-iterated in parliament at the start of May. Jeane Freeman agreed and re-iterated that routine testing of care home staff was being rolled out as at 18th May 2020. There are c.53,000 care home workers in Scotland – the total daily testing figure in Scotland is c.4,000, significantly less than that. Today, Jeane Freeman, accepted that, almost a month after she told the Scottish Parliament that care-home testing was being rolled-out, it still wasn’t happening consistently.
Today, Jeane Freeman admitted that Scottish NHS staff are still not being routinely tested and she does not know when this will be rolled-out. She has written to Health Boards to encourage more testing, saying that they are not meeting the Scottish Government’s testing targets.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Hair
Nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Weirdos!
No-one can deny the utter mess Johnson’s government have made since the crisis started, and we will never know how many lives have and will be lost because of it. But in Scotland the world is not rosy either. The Justice system ground to a complete halt at the start of lockdown, and is re-opening more slowly that McDonalds. There remains confusion about school re-opening plans. And Local Authorities are still waiting on COVID relief funding promised over a month ago.
As the Chinese curse wishes, we live in extraordinary times, but as with ordinary times, ‘Better than England’ does not mean ‘good’.
Paul Cruikshank 