HUMZA Yousaf has hit back at claims there were “malicious” intentions behind the drop in number of questions in contact tracers scripts.
The Health Secretary defended Public Health Scotland (PHS) on BBC Radio Scotland this morning after reports emerged suggesting the number of questions contact tracers ask those infected with Covid-19 has dropped from 25 to five.
It comes after The Scottish Sun reported that the changes were made in order to meet WHO targets which Test and Protect had slipped below.
However, Yousaf slammed the suggestion and said the scripts are constantly “evolving” and determined by PHS for “clinical and public health” reasons.
READ MORE: Covid in Scotland: 2048 new cases reported in 24 hours
Asked by the BBC’s Fiona Stalker on the Sunday show if claims that the number of questions had been cut were true, the Health Secretary said the scripts have been “continually evolving” since the pandemic began 16 months ago.
He said: “We are in a phase where the majority of the population, the adult population I should say, is double vaccinated, for example.
“So the questions would be different potentially at a time when we had a majority of the population vaccinated, than an unvaccinated population.
“What I would say is Fiona I don’t write the scripts for Public Health Scotland, very correctly, it’s Public Health Scotland, the clinical experts, the public health experts, in Public Health Scotland that decide what the script should look like, but that is done for clinical or public health.
“It’s not done for any other reason, certainly not for what was being suggested in one paper that it was being done for any malicious reasons.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a target to reach 80 per cent of close contacts of those infected with Covid-19 in 72 hours. The Scottish Government missed this target two weeks in a row.
Asked if this is what he was referring to, Yousaf replied: “Exactly, so that is not the reason why scripts would evolve or change.”
READ MORE: GPs' 'unmanageable' workloads spark calls for long Covid clinics to be set up
Yousaf was forced to defend Test and Protect during the interview, and said an extra 100 staff had been brought on to help improve performance.
Yousaf said: “I think it’s unfair to say we’re not getting it right. Test and Protect has performed extraordinarily well, what we saw in the last few weeks was a swift and steep increase in the number of cases to a record number, to a number we have never seen in Scotland.
“Yes our performance dipped below the WHO standard, below the standard that Scottish Government would expect.
“But through the changes we’ve made over the last few weeks, including an additional 100 staff which have been recruited, that means the capacity, daily system capacity has increased from 1300 to 3800 cases per day, and with additional 100 staff coming on board the daily capacity should go to approximately 5000 cases a day in very near future.
“So having seen again the recent data of the last few days I certainly see an improvement in Test and Protect performance, which I hope when next weeks statistics come out would indicate that improvement.”
It comes as the Health Secretary said that Scotland was “past the worst of the peak” and that the data is starting to show a stabilisation with cases levelling off.
Yousaf noted that case as “still very high” but that the government was optimistic.
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