Coronavirus (COVID-19): Cross Party Covid Recovery Steering Group presentation - 10 November 2021

Presentation

Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine programme update

Covid recovery strategy update

Modelling COVID-19 medium term projections

Winter preparedness

Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine programme update

Current performance metrics

• from 6 September to 9 November, over 2.9 million vaccination doses have been delivered (C Booster plus Flu)
• in the latest week, we have delivered over 494,000 doses (from 1 to 7 November)
• a total of 1,050,599 boosters and third doses have been given to people aged 12 and over to date, an increase of 221,298 from this time last week (2 November)

Information on the COVID-19 vaccination programme

• Public Health Scotland (PHS) publish weekly statistics on seasonal flu (on a Thursday)
• PHS continue to publish daily vaccine stats on their portal which feeds into the daily published stats on the UK Government website at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations

Booster and seasonal flu delivery timeline

Current activity

• NHS boards undertaking scheduled appointments for any remaining:
  • over 70 year olds
  • clinically extremely vulnerable
  • care homes
  • health and social care workers 
• scheduling and delivering for 60 to 69 year olds and 16+ with underlying health condition

Portal current activity

• online portal will open mid-November for appointments from week commencing 29 November onwards through December
  • 50 to 59
  • 16+ unpaid carers
  • 16+ household contacts

Future activity

• primary delivery will be using scheduled appointments through the portal (or via helpline) for the above groups including anyone who was unable to receive the vaccine

Covid recovery strategy update

Covid recovery – overview

Covid recovery strategy outcomes and overarching ambition

• financial security for low income households
• wellbeing of children and young yeople
• good, green jobs and fair work
• rebuilding public services

Tackling inequality and building person-centred public services will be supported by sectoral recovery

• education
• health
• justice
• economy

Outcome: good, green jobs and fair work

Actions:

• regional economic partnerships
• Green Jobs Fund and green jobs workforce academy
• manufacturing recovery plan, construction recovery plan and construction accord
• zero emissions strategy for new affordable homes
• affordable housing supply programme
• retail strategy
• women’s business centre
• 10 year national strategy for economic transformation
• adult upskilling and retraining
• digital skills pipeline
• Energy Transition Scotland Fund and North East Recovery and Skills Fund
• gender, ethnicity and disability employment action plans and ethnicity pay gap strategy
• community wealth building
• Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray

Outcomes: good, green jobs and fair work and financial security for low income households

Actions:

• 110,000 affordable homes
• no one left behind, fair work nation, real living wage and other fair work standards
• wraparound childcare and expansion of early learning and childcare for children aged one and two
• young persons guarantee

Outcome: financial security for low income households

Actions: 

• community level systems and school age childcare
• Parental Employability Support Fund
• benefit take-up strategy
• fuel poverty strategy
• fair fares review
• Community Bus Fund
• welfare rights advisors in gp surgeries

Outcomes: financial security for low income households and wellbeing of children and young people

Actions:

• roll out and doubling of Scottish child payment
• free school breakfasts and lunches, school clothing grant and free bikes pilot

Outcome: wellbeing of children and young people

Actions:

• Whole Family Wellbeing Fund
• sport and active living, and childhood obesity and adult weight management
• locally based mental health and wellbeing support
• Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund
• student mental health action plan
• Scaling Social Innovation Partnership (SIP) in partnership with the hunter foundation
• holistic family support
• Children’s Hearing Scotland
• sistema Scotland and youth music initiative
• summer 2022 and 2023 offers
• Scottish Teachers Advancing Computing Science (STACS)
• national trauma training programme

Covid recovery – education

Education recovery

Key actions and next steps focuses on:

• a clear and shared vision of excellence and equity
• schools, while charting a path from Early Learning and Childcare through to positive destinations
• the importance of health and wellbeing
• how £500m is being used to support learners and staff now

Examples of person centred approaches and commitment to tackling inequality:

• £1bn attainment challenge investment
• 3,500 additional teachers and 500 support staff
• national digital academy
• wraparound childcare
• free school breakfasts and lunches
• structural reform to improve systemic support for learning

Covid recovery – health

The NHS recovery plan focuses on:

• building capacity and resilience
• supporting patients and staff
• changing the way we deliver services
• enhancing partnership and engagement

Examples of person centred approaches and commitment to tackling inequality:

• increase of inpatient procedures by 55,500, outpatient appointments by 140,000 and diagnostic procedures of 70,000 by 2026

• recruitment of an additional 1,500 staff to support nine national treatment centres
• redesigning how patients access urgent care through NHS24
• open up more face to face GP appointments
• ensure at least 10% of frontline health spending will be dedicated to mental health

Covid recovery – justice

The forthcoming justice strategy will set out the following:

• how the existing Recover, Renew and Transformation programme established in April 2020 will be taken forward in the context of the overall strategy
• approaches to addressing long-standing challenges and inequalities
• a transformative vision of the future Justice system, with a focus on creating safer communities, ensuring the best outcomes for individuals and reducing crime

Examples of person centred approaches and commitment to tackling inequality

• founded in equalities and human rights
• trauma-informed
• person centred
• evidence-based

Covid recovery – economy

The forthcoming national strategy for economic transformation will be framed around following emerging strategic priorities:

• skills, wraparound, lifelong skills system
• entrepreneurship, resilient, ambitious and growing business base
• productivity, internationally competitive levels of productivity
• new markets, unlocking economic opportunities of new markets and innovations
• fair prosperity, Improve health and social outcomes to enable full participation

Examples of person centred approaches and commitment to tackling inequality:

• improving social outcomes by guaranteeing that work pays enough to cover the cost of living and enabling people to live healthy lives
• building an economy that maximises Scotland’s economic, social and environmental wellbeing

Covid recovery – delivery

Collective national endeavour for recovery

• quarterly progress reporting
• partnership with business organisations and third sector
• collaboration for recovery leadership innovation, learning, engaging
• covid programme board with Local Government

Modelling COVID-19 medium term projections

COVID-19 – impact and progression

• infected with COVID-19 - range one to 14 days (average five to six days) - symptoms onset
• symptom onset - range one to six point seven days (varies depending on age and nursing home residency) - hospitalisation
• symptom onset - range two to eight weeks (average 16 to 19 days) - death

Scottish Government – medium term projections

The Scottish Government assesses the impact of COVID-19 on the NHS in the next few weeks in terms of estimated number of infections. These are published weekly in the ‘Modelling the Epidemic series’ Coronavirus (COVID-19): modelling the epidemic - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

There continues to be uncertainty over the number of new infections, hospital occupancy and intensive care in the next three weeks.

(The presentation included the following 3 graphs can be found included in issue 76 of the ‘Modelling the Epidemic series’ - Coronavirus (COVID-19): modelling the epidemic (issue no. 76) - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)).

Figure 12: daily infections 

Figure 13: hospital beds

Figure 14: ICU beds

Winter preparedness

Health and social care pressures

• demand on health and social care continues to be very significant, general demands mirroring levels experienced during pre-COVID-19 winter months, however, it is important to note that we are responding to these pressures within an environment constrained by COVID-19 and with sustained level of COVID-19 cases and occupancies
• pressures are driven in part by society returning to more normality and patients feeling more comfortable to use health and care services again, restart of previously paused elective services, as well as a significant level of acute and ICU capacity re-directed to caring for COVID-19 cases
• around 10% of NHS’s acute capacity remains locked into managing the direct consequences of COVID-19 pressures, which may grow over the next months due to contact behaviours changing and despite the excellent progress of the vaccination programme, dependant on the uptake of boosters
• urgent care in terms of accident and emergency and are acute beds, has been the subject of significant pressures over many months, this is likely to be driven, in part, by COVID-19 cases and delayed discharges but also may reflect that patients with higher acuity are now attending accident and emergency, requiring admission
• Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCP’s) report a steep increase in demand for care both from those in the community, and in acute settings, especially for increased sizes of packages of care for care at home services
• our Health and Care staff have been under considerable pressure for many months, they came into this pandemic as a tough winter was coming to an end in 2020, and have been working tirelessly since then
• we understand how difficult it is for our health and social care teams as they work tirelessly to deliver treatment and care to people in their communities and I want to thank them for their dedication and commitment to the people of Scotland

Actions being taken

A package of over £300 million of investment in NHS and care services has been announced this winter to help address these pressures. These actions focus on:

• supporting our staff to deliver high quality care, in the right place, at the right time covering action to expand the workforce and supporting the health and wellbeing of our staff
• increasing capacity to meet demand and maintain high quality integrated health and social care services throughout autumn and winter covering
  • urgent and emergency care
  • routine and planned care
  • social care
  • primary care
  • NHS24 and SAS
• supporting the public through clear and consistent messaging to make sure they access the right care, in the right place, at the right time

Delivery and governance

• our health and care system is under more pressure than at any point in the pandemic and this winter will be one of the most challenging it has faced
• a System Response Group (SRG) has been established to provide strategic oversight and direction to support a collective response to these pressures as well as oversee the delivery of the investment programme
• the SRG meets at least weekly providing a partnership approach which involves senior leaders from across the health and social care system including representatives from health boards, local government and central government

National oversight - local monitoring

• system response group - local Health Board, bronze, silver, gold command
• resilience meetings - HSCP, bronze, silver, gold command
• weekly SG-NHS meetings - Health Board and HSCP local, resilience and operational plans
• social care, gold command