Coronavirus: NHS Grampian reaches test agreement with councils

Dyce testing facility

The Dyce facility opened earlier this month

By David Shanks
BBC Scotland reporter

NHS Grampian has reached an agreement to provide coronavirus testing for the three local authorities in the north east of Scotland.

Provision will be made available to those symptomatic, or isolating due to the symptoms of someone in their household, for key workers at Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray councils.

An airport site will continue to cater for non-NHS key workers.

These include those in critical sectors such as the police and fire service.

That government site at Aberdeen International Airport opened on 11 April.

It had been proposed that Aberdeen City Council's testing could move to the new Dyce site this week, but the council later said it would not be utilising the airport site and would maintain testing with NHS Grampian.

Emergency services

NHS Grampian said due to numbers of staff working both in and outside of health and social care, in order to avoid multiple routes to testing for council employees, an agreement was reached for it all to be done through the NHS.

The Scottish government said: "These drive-through testing facilities are operated by external consultants on behalf of the UK government.

"Keyworkers across all emergency services - police, prison officers, fire service and ambulance service staff - as well as health and care workers, those employed by the Scottish Prison Service and NHS24 staff are all already being given access to airport drive-through testing. We are keeping access to testing under constant review.

"Testing is targeted at those who are self-isolating because they are symptomatic, or have adult household members who are symptomatic, to help enable critical workers to return to work as soon as safely possible.

"The tests are effective at identifying people who have Covid-19, but only when they are symptomatic. They cannot reliably detect infection prior to the onset of symptoms."