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The Scottish Government’s commitment to train 500 Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) by 2021 was met by August 2021. As of September 2021, 536 nurses had completed their Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Nursing Practice (PG Dip ANP).

All alarms have a limited lifespan of around ten years due to deterioration of the sensors over time. Where alarms are expired, or no longer fit for purpose, it is recommended they are disposed of appropriately either by returning to the retailer or taken to a local authority household waste recycling centre.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) previously published advice on the Management of end-of-life smoke detectors, including advice for businesses and households on safe disposal and promoting the environmentally sound management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) devices.

Reporting of positive cases of Covid-19 and the request to isolate has been set out in public health guidance throughout the pandemic. There have been no changes to the public health guidance to self-isolate and book a PCR test if symptomatic, and to continue to self-isolate if the result is positive.

Information on the number of people diagnosed with malnutrition and associated conditions is not held centrally.

We continually keep our COVID-19 Status Certification scheme under review and consider a range of evidence, data, and information which is already published. Information such as the “ trends in daily data ”; the weekly report on the “ state of the epidemic ”, and the anticipated pressures on our public services. Following that consideration Ministers then report to parliament, detailing the outcome of their review every 3 weeks.

I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-03671 and S6W-03672 on 17 November 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-04212 and S6W-04213 on 25 November 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Test and Protect’s contact tracing service can only identify close contacts based on the information provided by people who have tested positive, and we are grateful to everyone that reports all their contacts when engaging with the contact tracing system. We continue to ask people to engage with the service by phone or by completing the online tracing form, to provide as much information as possible about their close contacts during the infectious period. This ensures that the right public health advice can be offered to close contacts to cut off chains of virus transmission in the community.

We have introduced a range of measures, including increased use of digital and SMS communications and shortened call scripts for index case interviews, to ensure the contact tracing system continues to trace the contacts of people with Coronavirus and ensure they are given the right public health advice as quickly as possible, even when case numbers rise substantially. All decisions in relation to operational delivery of the contact tracing system have made in line with public health advice, including the continued prioritisation of higher risk cases. A combination of these changes is likely to have affected the average number of close contacts reported per case.

The commitment to recruit 800 additional GPs is based on GP headcount and we remain on track to meet that commitment by 2027 as originally set out.

We have taken a number of actions to fulfil this commitment, including increasing the number of medical places at universities, and taking steps to encourage medical graduates to choose general practice. To that end, between 2015-16 and 2021-22 the Scottish Government will have increased the annual intake of medical places in Scottish universities from 848 to 1117 (269 places, a 32% increase). The majority of these new places are focused on general practice.

By increasing the amount of undergraduate curriculum that is delivered in general practice to 25%. We are confident increased exposure to general practice will encourage more students to train as GPs. With an increase of 89 GPs in 2019-20 we are now confident we are starting to see the positive impact of these actions.

The Scottish Government wants to improve opportunities, outcomes and support for people with learning disabilities including Down’s Syndrome. To this end, we have committed to introducing a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill as part of the Programme for Government. This Bill will ensure that the rights of people with Down’s Syndrome, among others, are respected and protected.

To help make sure that the new legislation is championed when it is implemented, we will create a Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner through the new law.