Information regarding funding amounts provided to community pharmacy contractors to provide COVID-19 vaccinators is not held centrally. The employment and deployment of COVID-19 vaccinators, including pharmacists, is a matter for individual Health Boards. To support them in this regard, the Scottish Government has agreed a sessional rate of £231 for pharmacist contractors participating in the programme. Each session covered by the rate lasts 3.5 hours.

First, it is important to note that there has been no change in the Scottish Government policy on the remuneration arrangements for independent contractors or those working within a primary care settings participation in the COVID Vaccination programme.

The guidance for community pharmacy contractors was published on 26 November 2020 along with guidance for the other primary care contractor groups. This guidance can be accessed at: https://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/pca/PCA2020(P)26.pdf.

The guidance sets out the details to allow Health Boards to enter into arrangements with contractors to participate in the vaccination programme with those listed on the appropriate contractors / performers list.

In the case of community pharmacy, it is those entities listed on the Boards Pharmaceutical List to provide pharmaceutical services on behalf of the Health Board, in accordance with the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 and the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2009.

Existing regulations do not currently provide for the provision of performers listing for the pharmacy profession and as such the remuneration arrangements for participation in the vaccination programme put in place for community pharmacy contractors does not apply to individual employees or self-employed locum pharmacists.

However, it would appear that some Health Boards applied the nationally agreed rate for community pharmacy contractors inappropriately to those self-employed locum pharmacists.

It is important to note that individual employees or locum pharmacists have not been removed from participating in the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Their skills are needed in this public health emergency and we would encourage those who are able to contact their local Health Board expressing their interest of joining the programme.

Each Health Board have arrangements in place for healthcare professionals, including pharmacists to support the roll out of the programme as vaccinators, while work is taken forward to build a sustainable vaccination workforce.

The specific arrangements may vary from Board to Board but in principle the individual would be recruited to the NHS Board Bank at the Agenda for Change Band 3 or 5 depending on the vaccinator role undertaken. However, some health boards may be offering sessional payment to individual locum pharmacists.

Information on the anticipated number of face-to-face appointments is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as GP practices are responsible for their own patient appointment and consultation arrangements.

While the number of virtual appointments will have risen during the pandemic, GP practices could adopt virtual or other forms of remote working before the pandemic and there is no "full face-to-face service" as such to restore. GP practices are encouraged to retain any new ways of working developed during the pandemic which support access, quality, inclusivity, and continuity of patient care.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00280 on 14 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

We can confirm that the first delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine into Scotland, was on the 5 December 2020.

We recognise the importance of more frequent sharing of data on deaths by suspected suicide to further support responsive local suicide prevention planning.

We are working closely with Public Health Scotland who will roll out processes for timely data sharing over the summer. These processes involve extracting anonymised information on deaths by suspected suicide from Police Scotland records and providing this information on a regular basis to local partners. The frequency of this information sharing is yet to be determined. As this data will be provisional and not subject to the standard verification processes for suicide data, there are presently no plans to publish this.

For completeness, information on both the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Act 2020 is included within the scope of this answer.

General advice on the first Act for stakeholders was published in April 2020.This was subsequently superseded on 12 June 2020 with guidance covering both Acts.That guidance remains on the Scottish Government website . It provides central and local government and public bodies in Scotland an overview of the key measures within the Acts, and is easily available to health and social care partnerships. Explanatory notes were also published for both Acts, which are also accessible on legislation.gov.uk .

Guidance and resources were also supplied on specific areas covered within the Acts. On 31 March 2021, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Supplementary National Child Protection Guidance was issued to a number of senior staff at key agencies involved with child protection, including Integrated Joint Board (IJB) Chief Officers and Chief Executives of NHS Boards. The Guidance was updated and reissued on 16 April, 1 June, 31 August and 22 December 2020. It remains under review and will be updated as necessary.

Guidance on the social care staff support fund was published on 24 June 2020 on the Scottish Government website. It was updated on 15 April 2021. The guidance provides information for social care workers and employers about the Social Care Staff Support Fund.

In terms of resources, following detailed review of the financial position £1.7 billion of additional funding has been provided in 2020-21 to support the Health and Social Care Sector in the response to the pandemic. Allocations during 2020-21 have been made of £561 million for Integration Authorities to support additional COVID costs including funding for sustainability payments to meet forecast costs for 2020-21, in addition to wider social care support, for example for reducing delayed discharges, for loss of income and for other staff costs. The Scottish Government is very clear that we will meet any increasing need for social care as a result of the pandemic, and we will continue to work with Integration Authorities, COSLA and Health Boards to ensure they have the resources required. All of this is over and above the normal funding provided to Integration Authorities.

National Records of Scotland (NRS) has had to reschedule the publication of its statistics on the causes of deaths registered in 2020, including deaths by suicide.

These were originally scheduled for publication in June 2021. However, due to action to clear a backlog of toxicology analyses and an increase in the number of deaths requiring investigation in 2020, there was a delay in receipt of relevant data from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

NRS has now received this data from COPFS and plans to publish these statistics on 17 August 2021. Further information is available on the NRS website: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/future-publications

a) The app records the number of people that have “chosen to leave” (see the “Users that chose to leave” column in the table attached in reply to S6W-00767 on 30 June 2021).

b) Due to the anonymous nature of the app there is no way to know the number of people that have deleted the app.

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

The total number of downloads of the app are shown in the table attached in reply to S6W-00767 on 30 June 2021. The functionality to count the number of active daily app users has been improved since launch and currently indicates that there are around 980,000 active users each day.

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