Routine COVID-19 testing in hospitals care homes and prisons is being scaled back, according to the Scottish government.
The Scottish government has claimed that “the success of the vaccination programme and treatments” means that testing will now be carried out on an individual basis rather than a routine policy.
However, it added that routine testing will continue for patients moving from hospitals to care homes and will be reviewed based on future advice.
The new guidance will come into effect at the end of August.
The majority of COVID-19 testing has been paused since August 2022 in England, after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to end all legal coronavirus restrictions in England and start “living with COVID” in February of the same year. Though COVID-19 testing policy continues to focus on those at highest risk.
Revise the Advice
Scotland’s chief medical officer Sir Gregor Smith said: “Due to the success of vaccines in protecting people, and the availability of improved treatments, now is the right time to revise the advice on routine COVID-19 testing across health and social care settings and prisons.
“This will ensure the testing regime remains effective and proportionate.
“Routine testing will remain when patients are discharged from hospital to care homes, to provide additional reassurance for these settings, and testing will still be required when clinically appropriate.
“The clinical advice tells us that focusing on the risk to individuals under general infection control procedures will allow our hospital, social care, and prison staff to better protect those in their care and that there is no longer a requirement to apply separate COVID-19 guidance across the board when so many are now protected from its worst harms.”
The Scottish Government implemented stringent and extended restrictions during COVID.
In February 2022 former Scotland First Minster Nicola Sturgeon defended plans to cut the bottom off some school classroom doors to improve ventilation as “basic common sense.”
At one point, she refused to rule out shutting down the Scotland-England border in the wake of the Omicron variant and was once accused of banning bagpipes over fear that they spread coronavirus.
Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry
Scotland’s official COVID-19 inquiry, which is separate from the UK inquiry, opened last month (pdf).
In July, the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry published a report commissioned from an independent expert on the scientific and medical understanding of coronavirus and COVID-19 as it existed in late 2019 and developed during the pandemic, up until the end of 2022.
Author of the report Dr. Ashley Croft, consultant public health physician and medical epidemiologist, told the inquiry that in 2020, there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g., frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19.
But for other measures (e.g., face-mask mandates outside of health care settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures), there “was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use—or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years.”
He added that it “has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal, and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.’
Dr. Croft also said that “it remains unclear as to whether or not COVID-19 vaccination has resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19.”
On Thursday, following final advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the Scottish government and Public Health Scotland are now focusing on “protecting those at highest risk of becoming seriously ill.”
This means that COVID-19 vaccine boosters will no longer routinely be offered to healthy under-65s, whereas last year it was offered to everyone over 50.
PA Media contributed to this report.
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