Initial estimates suggest that 5,786 invitations have not yet issued to people affected by the pause, but it should be stressed that this will be for a range of reasons, including participants being excluded from the programme after it restarted, or taking the opportunity to be screened at their GP ahead of their scheduled prompt to make an appointment. Data on patients who had their routine cervical screening test delayed and have (a) now received a test, (b) referred for further investigation is not routinely available at present.

Public Health Scotland will release their annual statistical report on the cervical screening programme on 1 September 2021.

Ear wax removal services are available through the NHS.

How to treat ear wax is a clinical decision; ear syringing is not the current preferred procedure and is no longer routinely provided by clinicians.

The NHS has continued to provide services to patients throughout the pandemic. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic some routine condition management has needed to be paused but only in those instances where it is safe to do so.

Table 1 shows the average daily number of Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) Contact Tracers scheduled to work on the COVID-19 Test and Protect service each week from 1 May. These are projected workforce figures taken from management information submitted by Health Boards in weekly returns and therefore do not necessarily represent final deployment figures. Wider support and administration staff are not included in these returns.

The Scottish Government does not hold data centrally on the proportion of these staff who are secondees or redeployed; the secondment and deployment of staff is a matter for each board.

Table 1. Whole Time Equivalent Contact Tracers working for the COVID-19 Test and Protect service in each week from 1 May 2021

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government or by Public Health Scotland.

Information relating to the number of patients awaiting a colposcopy and their length of wait would be held by individual Health Boards.

Enforcement of the Coronavirus Regulations is a matter for the Chief Constable and Police Scotland.

The latest data available on Police Scotland’s website Enforcement and Response Data - Police Scotland shows that as of 14 July 2021, 16,993 fixed-penalty notices have been issued and 971 arrests have been made under these regulations.

The published figures are not broken down to show the reasons for issuing of fixed-penalty notices or arrests; the presentation and format of Police Scotland data, is an operational matter for the Chief Constable.

Ministers are not notified of every patient death by suspected hospital acquired infection. However, Ministers are routinely notified of incidents of hospital infection outbreaks (involving two or more patients) with management information regarding the organism of infection, number of patients involved in the outbreak, investigations and any suspected deaths associated with the outbreak.

Since May 2020 the Scottish Government has published projections of infections, hospitalisations and ICU admissions in its weekly publication Modelling the Epidemic in Scotland Coronavirus (COVID-19): modelling the epidemic - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . These projections also feed into internal Scottish Government models on the demand of the Test and Protect system, including the tracing workforce, to enable operational planning.

The path of the pandemic has been highly complex and uncertain over the last 16 months and this is reflected in the complexity and uncertainty of the modelling. We make the best judgements we can on the data in front of us and the advice we have. Right now, as often in the past, our judgement is that the best path for us in Scotland is to make progress carefully and cautiously, and that is what we are doing.

The contact tracing system has not changed its approach regarding the time frame used to identify close contacts.

Those testing positive who have attended a complex or high-risk setting during their infectious period, or who have travelled in the last 14 days, are contact traced and then referred to their local Health Board, who will make a risk-based decision on whether ‘backwards’ contact tracing is appropriate to enable Test and Protect to identify where the index case might have contracted the virus. This ‘pre-infectious period’ covers the 5 days prior to the infectious period.

Separately, the timeframe of 48 hours before symptom onset or a positive test, plus the 10 days after, relates to the infectious period of a positive person. This is based on clinical advice and has been the position since Test and Protect was launched in May 2020. Close contacts identified during this timeframe are offered public health advice by Test and Protect to prevent potential onward spread of the virus.

To understand the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing the development of long COVID, an individual first has to have had COVID-19 in the first place.

Therefore, the question really is effectiveness of vaccines in preventing the COVID-19 virus and subsequent long COVID. A study published by Public Health England on 22 May 2021, Vaccines highly effective against B.1.617.2 variant after 2 doses , demonstrates the high effectiveness levels of two doses of both AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines against the Delta variant.

Two doses offer good protection against the Delta variant at levels of 88% and 60% for Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines respectively after two weeks. This is compared to 93% and 66% against the Kent variant. One dose of either vaccine offers protection of 33% against Delta variant after three weeks, compared to 50% against the Kent variant.

This follows data published on 23 April 2021 by the University of Oxford and the Office for National Statistics which showed that one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca cut coronavirus cases by nearly two-thirds and were 74% effective against symptomatic infection.

Clinical trials have found that vaccination against COVID-19 further reduces the likelihood contracting long COVID even if an individual develops COVID-19. A paper published by the Tony Blair Institute on 18 June 2021, The Hidden Pandemic: Long Covid , states ‘vaccination also provides additional protection against long COVID: even if a vaccinated individual goes on to contract Covid-19, that person’s chances of developing Long Covid are reduced by a further 30 per cent in the most at-risk age group.’

Additionally, the vaccines have shown to also relieve symptoms of long COVID in people that already developed COVID-19. Yale School of Medicine stated on 12 April 2021, Why Vaccines May Be Helping Some With Long COVID , ‘as many as 30 to 40 per cent of those who get the vaccine have reported improvements to their symptoms.’

However, analysis by Professor Karl Friston, of University College London, suggests that changes in people’s behaviour after being vaccinated have reduced the vaccines’ ability to prevent infection . People who have “let their guards down” by dramatically reducing social distancing and other safety measures have put themselves at much higher risk of contracting COVID -19 and potentially developing long COVID, believes Professor Friston, who publishes a weekly Covid-modelling report and sits on the influential independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies ( SAGE ).

I refer the member to the question S6W-00316 answered on
‎17 June 2021 All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers