A care home worker was told to travel more than 20 miles from her house in Perth to Dundee after testing positive for Covid-19.
The employee was instructed by NHS Tayside to travel across local authority boundaries for a secondary test despite already having a positive result.
NHS Tayside has confirmed it is standard practice for care home staff to travel to testing hubs after they return a positive result, even if they are some distance away, and deemed the journeys “essential travel”.
The Courier understands the woman received the positive test for coronavirus on Thursday morning during routine testing at a HC-One care facility in Scone and returned home to self-isolate.
Care home bosses contacted Public Health who called the worker on Thursday afternoon and told her to travel to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Dundee for a second test.
Alexander Stewart, Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, said the protocol was “misguided”.
He said: “The fact that this care home worker after initially testing positive was asked to travel across council boundaries for further testing was misguided and presented a grave and unnecessary risk.
“Even with the encouraging news of a vaccine rollout, we must continue to do everything we can to stop the spread of the virus.”
He said the issue also raised concerns abut the protocols for care home workers who did not have access to their own vehicles.
NHS Tayside said in those instances a testing team would travel to the person’s house.
The health authority defended the position, claiming the follow up tests cannot be done by post.
A spokesperson said: “Care home staff are offered weekly testing for Covid-19 through the UK’s care home surveillance testing programme.
“If a care home worker has a positive test, has no symptoms of Covid-19 and has had no contact with anyone with confirmed Covid-19, NHS Tayside routinely arranges for them to have a repeat test through our NHS community testing service.
“These confirmation tests are not available by post and it is important that the tests are carried out as quickly as possible to support staff back to work where appropriate.
“Attending for a Covid-19 test is considered an essential journey and there are no restrictions for people moving between local authority areas for this purpose.”
The spokesperson said an individual with a positive test would be expected to remain in their car at all times and travel directly between home and the testing facility without stopping.
The Covid-19 tests carried out at the NHS site differ from the Lighthouse Lab tests used by care homes.
A HC-One spokesperson said it had followed the required procedures and revealed the second test had come back negative.
“We understand that as part of routine testing on Tuesday a colleague was believed to have tested positive,” said the spokesperson.
“It is standard practice to also defer any positive cases to Public Health so this person was tested again on Thursday and we actually received the result of that on Friday morning which was negative so it is likely that the initial result would have been a false positive.”
