Question reference: S5W-33180
- Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 11 November 2020
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Current status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 2 December 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether the COVID-19 Test and Protect system has indicated hotspots or types of settings that people in Inverclyde have visited prior to testing positive for the virus.
Answer
Contacts are traced from information collected and made available to Test and Protect by Incident Management Teams. This allows Test and Protect to contact those who may have been exposed to the virus in a particular setting, and request them to take appropriate steps to prevent potential onward spread.
Public Health Scotland has produced a table of settings and events that index cases have attended over the previous 7 days. This is based on interviews conducted with cases identified in the Case Management System and involves cases recalling where they have been in the 7 days prior to symptom onset (or date of test if asymptomatic).
However, Public Health Scotland cannot infer from the figures whether a specific setting or an event indicates where the COVID-19 transmission took place. This is because cases may have attended multiple settings or events within a short space of time, some of which may be low risk settings and events where it is highly improbable that transmission took place. In addition, it is possible that even though a case visited a few settings and events, transmission may have taken place within their home setting.