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There have been two interruptions to the service. On both 11 April and 21 April the SMS service was unable to send outgoing messages for a period of time. However, all inbound messages were received.

In each case people will have experienced a delay between sending their message to register and receiving a response from the SMS service confirming their registration, but no one will have been unable to register as a consequence.

As at 26 April 2020, the number of shielded individuals who signed up for priority online supermarket deliveries by local authority area is presented in the following table.

Public Health Scotland identified 105,277 people from central sources before 10 April. As of 24 April, it has identified a further 6,301 people on or since 10 April.

37,838 people were identified from non-central sources before 10 April. As of 24 April a further 9,710 have been identified on or since 10 April. It is not possible to categorise people as being identified specifically by clinicians.

As of 24 April 159,126 people have been written to. People are written to on an ongoing basis as they are identified. 132,379 were written to before 10 April, and as of 24 April a further 26,747 have been written to on or since 10 April.

This process will continue - if people are newly diagnosed, or if clinicians feel it is required, people will continue to be added to the central list to ensure they can be supported to shield.

Information held nationally on delayed discharges can identify the number of people who were delayed in their discharge from hospital awaiting completion of care arrangements for social support in order to live in their own home and whose delay period ended in death. Information is not available prior to July 2016 due to a change in data definitions and reporting requirements. Figures for calendar years 2017 to 2019 are shown in the following table.

Number of people delayed in their discharge from hospital awaiting completion of care arrangements for social support in order to live in their own home whose delay period ended in death; by NHS Board; Calendar years 2017-2019

The local authority telephone numbers for people seeking support with shielding can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/covid-shielding/pages/contacts/

The Scottish Government does not hold information on either the numbers of staff taking calls or the waiting times across local authority areas.

By 24 April 2020, 76,888 people had registered with the SMS shielding service. Of these, 27,000 people registered before 10 April, and 49,888 people registered on or after 10 April.

The SMS shielding service offers information and support to people who have been advised to shield because they are at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19:

• People who sign up to the SMS service can use it to request free weekly boxes of basic groceries, if they don’t have another way of getting food and household items.
• The SMS service asks people if they would like their details to be passed to the supermarkets, so that they can access priority delivery slots.
• The SMS service signposts people to their local authority if they need prescription medications delivered.

All of these services are available to anyone in the shielding group who needs them, including people who do not have access to a mobile phone. The services can all be accessed through each local authority’s shielding helpline, or through the new national helpline.

Many people who are shielding will not require access to these services as they will have existing support networks they can use to access food and medicine.

People who are shielding are encouraged to register for the SMS service so that they can be contacted with further updates as the situation around COVID-19 develops.

The letter issued by the Chief Medical Officer to those who are recommended to shield contains important information advising how people in this group should keep themselves safe, what support is available to them, a range of references to sources of further information or help, and information about key issues which are likely to arise. It is essential that those being asked to shield have this information available to them in order to keep themselves safe.

Advice is also available through each local authority’s shielding helpline, or through the new national helpline.

The information contained in the letter is broadly the same as letters issued by the other Chief Medical Officers across the UK in relation to shielding.

The Local Resilience Partnerships (LRPs) bring together a range of strategic local partners and, working with local community groups, provide support to people who are shielding including organising food deliveries, for example for people who do not have mobile phones, as well as assistance with prescription medication deliveries.

Any contact to LRPs in respect of shielding should be made through the relevant Local Authority. The Scottish Government and Local Authorities communicate on shielding on a daily basis.

The international standard for an appropriate pandemic response is to double ICU capacity. NHS Scotland has more than trebled its adult ICU capacity, from a base of 173 beds to a surge capacity of 585. These beds will be brought into use as needs dictate, on a daily basis. Given the scale of the current emergency, we have asked Health Boards to go further by preparing to quadruple the base ICU capacity; bringing the total number of adult beds to over 700.

To deliver that increase, we have ordered ventilators from a range of manufacturers and these are beginning to arrive with more deliveries to arrive over the coming weeks. To bridge any gaps between now and the delivery of new ventilators, Health Boards have been working to repurpose operating theatre anaesthetic machines for use as ventilators. That is not a long-term solution, but it is allowing us to rapidly increase our capacity of intensive care beds.

No clinical waste has been stored at hospital sites under contingency. No additional hospital storage costs have been incurred.