First Minister, it has been reported in the

Daily Record today that, according to NHS Lanarkshire board papers, it is suspected that almost 100 patients and staff contracted Covid in non-Covid parts of hospitals and that, sadly, a fifth of those patients later died.

Following on from my questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport in recent weeks, including yesterday, I have had a lot of families in my parliamentary region getting in touch with me. Do any of those figures include patients who had recently been discharged from hospital and who died at home in the community? In particular, is that something that the nosocomial review group is looking at in relation to recent discharges, and how can families who want to raise concerns and who have questions get in touch with the nosocomial review group?

As I said earlier, the statistics that the health secretary has shared with Parliament are unvalidated. That means that it is not safe or responsible for any of us to draw firm conclusions from them until they are validated.

There is work going on to understand whether infections were acquired in hospital or were acquired in the community; that includes patients who were diagnosed in hospital, whether or not any patient sadly went on to die, and infections in staff who work in hospitals and have perhaps been working with Covid patients. That still has to be understood.

As I said earlier, we hope that that work will be completed by the end of this month and then it will be published for not just members of Parliament but members of the public—including families who have had this direct experience—to look at.

Until we have that validated work, I simply say to all members to be a little bit cautious about drawing firm conclusions from the unvalidated statistics at this stage.