REGULAR testing must be routinely offered across Scotland in order to guard against more deaths in care homes across the country, it has been claimed.

Last week Jeane Freeman, Scottish Health Secretary, wrote to all health boards instructing them that improving testing in care homes was required and was “not for local interpretation”.

Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, said that she had been forced to do that because the implementation of the testing strategy by health boards had been “a dog’s breakfast” that must now be sorted.

He claimed that despite repeated calls now stretching back months for all staff to be tested, some areas were only testing 10% of staff, while others 25% of staff. Many were still not testing residents, forcing them to be needlessly isolated and barrier nursed in some cases.

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He said: “What happens in the community impacts on what happens in care homes in particular as well as those working or with home care. So there is a real sense that the world is getting back to ‘normal’ and social care risks being forgotten. As the Cabinet Secretary indicated, she has sent a letter to health boards about the need for testing and to ask for their plans. The reason she has had to do that is it’s been a dogs breakfast. There are light years of a difference between what is promised and what is delivered.

“We have said all along ‘test, test, test’. That has to be for staff but it also has to be for residents.” He dismissed “ethical concerns” raised by the chief medical officer and Scottish ministers.

“To be blunt, what is the greatest ethical concern?” he asked. “Testing a resident to see if they have a virus that puts them at risk both to themselves and to staff, or something else? If Wales, the Republic of Ireland, France, Australia have all got over their ‘ethical concerns’ then why are we presenting the failure to test residents as an ethical issue?”

Derek Barron, director of care at Erskine, said: “We got testing done three weeks ago and in three of our homes we have tested all of our residents and all of our staff.

“It was a one-off which I was delighted to have. But as a one-off it’s fairly useless. My staff are all out in the community and at any given point could touch something, someone with Covid could cough on them or whatever.

“The only difference is that we are now using PPE all of the time whereas we weren’t doing that right at the beginning, as that was not the guidance. It means we have reduced the risk of passing things on. But we have not eliminated it.

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“So we need to have testing regularly. Is that weekly? I don’t think it can be further apart than fortnightly.

“We did the tests for all of our staff last time – we were provided with tests and got the results back but I made sure we did the tests. I’ve requested that but we haven’t agreed to what that will look like.”

Yesterday, think tank Our Scottish Future also called for every care home worker in Scotland to be tested for coronavirus within the next week.

Professor Jim Gallagher, of the think tank, said: “Governments shouldn’t be letting test capacity go to waste. In the last week or so, the Scottish Government could have tested every single care home worker and resident but didn’t.

“It’s not good enough just to blame the health boards for this failure. It’s not enough just to test people who already know they’re sick. Failure to test care home staff routinely puts them in an impossible position, and puts lives at risk.”