Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton Constituency, has told Nicola Sturgeon that she must immediately ensure that significantly more contact tracers are recruited in order to effectively trace the rising number of Covid-19 cases.

This follows reports to Jackie Baillie from local constituents, informing her that they had not been contacted by tracers for up to five days after being tested positive for Covid-19 case. One constituent spent an hour in a car with someone who then tested positive for Covid-19 but has yet to be contacted by an NHS Scotland contact tracer.

Jackie Baillie raised the fact that some health boards have recruited contact tracers on the basis of there being seven positive cases a day, despite health boards seeing positive daily cases rise into the hundreds.

This exchange took place during the First Minister’s statement to the Scottish Parliament, during which she laid out the additional restrictions which are coming into force across Scotland and in particular in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area.

Jackie Baillie MSP said:

“We are grateful for the work of our existing contact tracers but they have an impossible job as there are not enough of them to cope with the level of demand.

“We have absolutely no hope of reducing the spread of this virus if those who are coming into contact with positive cases are not quickly contacted and told to self-isolate.

“Nowhere near enough contact tracers have been recruited to meet the demand presented by the rocketing daily case figures. It is completely unacceptable that local people are not being contacted. The lack of tracers across our health boards is directly putting whole communities at risk.

“I have called on Nicola Sturgeon and her government to come clean with the number of tracers that she plans to recruit. Further inaction in terms of recruiting significantly more tracers will make more positive cases, further restrictions and, sadly, more deaths a very real concern.”