Serious concerns are being raised regarding the soaring number of patients in Scottish hospitals who are acquiring Covid-19 while being treated for an unrelated illness. Public Health Scotland data has revealed the concerning number of patients affected. What measures will the Scottish Government put in place to ensure that increased infection control is undertaken in all our hospitals?

There is a significant and strong focus on infection control in our hospitals. This morning, I looked at the latest data on Covid nosocomial infection, which has just been published today—the nature of the collection and analysis of that data means that there is a three-week time lag.

There is a reduction in the total number of cases that are deemed to be probable or definite hospital onset, although the proportion is still a little bit higher. What we find, and have found, with Covid is that the trend of hospital-acquired infection mirrors that of community transmission. The figures published today are from a period when community transmission was still much higher than it is right now and we hope that, as community transmission has reduced, so too will hospital infection.

Every day, the people who work in our hospitals focus very hard on minimising the prospect and possibility of not just Covid but all infections being passed on. The data that the member refers to is looked at very closely so that teams on the ground know whether there is more that they can do. However, one of the key lessons in the context of Covid is that the relationship between community and hospital transmission is quite strong, so the more we can do to reduce community transmission, the more we help to reduce transmission in our hospitals as well.

The Presiding Officer:

I apologise to those members we were not able to reach. We will return at 2.30 with Liberal Democrat business.

13:32 Meeting suspended.

14:30 On resuming—