The government has issued new updated guidance on the roll out of home testing kits for those who do not live near or cannot get to a central testing centre.
It also covers the process for employer registration for referrals, self referral and home testing kits. You can find that here https://www.gov.scot/
Work has also been done on prioritisation of key workers for tests and you can click on this graphic to see the prioritisation matrix in full.
Kate Ramsden, branch co-chair said, “The branch is delighted to see this expansion of testing. We raised with our colleagues in the Local Government Committee the difficulties in accessing testing faced by many of our members who either don’t drive or who live at some considerable distance from a testing centre.
“We could see that this would be a problem for many rural branches. This was raised by UNISON Scotland with the Scottish Government and we are glad they listened to our members’ concerns and addressed the problem.”
When UNISON met with the National Director for Testing, Wendy Wilkinson, last week, she outlined that the reason that tests are not being provided to asymptomatic people is because of the unreliability of the current test and the risk of it giving a false negative result in those instances.
She said that only an antibody test will improve that position and give reliable information on immunity and that is what scientists across the globe are working on right now.