Test and Protect: equality and Fairer Scotland Duty impact assessment

9. Monitoring and Review

Whilst the Test and Protect strategy is expected to have a positive impact across the Scottish population, including equalities groups, through reducing transmission of Covid-19 and substantially reducing the public health risks, the Scottish Government recognises that some interventions with the Test and Protect service may be a disproportionate impact on some equalities groups. Throughout the development and delivery of Test and Protect, mitigating the effects of some of these impacts on specific equalities groups has been embedded in the policy design process.

The Covid-19 pandemic remains a dynamic situation and it remains the case that policy measures will need to continue to evolve and change to respond to the delivery of the vaccine programme, new variants of Covid-19 and changes in case numbers in the wider population. As part of developing and delivering any future policy changes, the Scottish Government will continue to analyse and to attempt to mitigate the impact of such interventions on a range of equalities groups.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with a wide range of external stakeholders, public agencies, local authorities, advisory groups and people with lived experience to consult, analyse and develop an evidence base that ensures that policies are robustly tested.

This EQIA document is a summary of activity to date and will be updated iteratively to reflect changes to Test and Protect policy and delivery whilst engagement in relation to the issues raised in this paper continues regularly through a range of forums including:

• The Covid Advisory Group
• The Covid Compliance Advisory Group
• Isolation Support Delivery Leads Forum
• Expert Reference Group on Covid and Ethnicity

In addition, officials continue to utilise a wide range of sources to consider the impacts of policy and delivery including through:

• Regular public attitudinal and insights engagement
• The commissioning and delivery of qualitative research on self-isolation
• Test and Protect management information

As part of the ongoing review of the impact of Test and Protect across equalities groups a revised EQIA summary will be published in Autumn 2021.

Testing and Contact Tracing Policy Division

Covid Public Health Directorate

Scottish Government