Millions of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) are to be distributed to 70 social care equipment hubs from tomorrow (Monday) as the Scottish government seeks to meet the rapidly growing demand caused by covid-19.

Over the next five days, every GP practice in Scotland will receive eight weeks’ stock of PPE, with extra staff and delivery teams drafted in and existing workers asked to do longer shifts.

In addition to keeping up deliveries to over 700 hospitals next week, the government says it will distribute half a million aprons, 750,000 masks and 2 million gloves through the social care delivery points.

A further one million aprons, one million masks, two million gloves and 550,000 goggles will go to GP surgeries.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman says protecting the health and social care workforce from covid-19 is the ‘absolute priority’, and she is confident that the government can meet the unprecedented demand:

“We currently have adequate stocks of PPE – equating to six weeks’ worth of hospital stock for the most critical items.

“We will be issuing almost eight million items of PPE stock in the coming week to support Primary Care and Social Care. Work continues as an absolute priority to source further PPE to ensure there continues to be an appropriate supply for all our health and social care workforce.”

Last week a national PPE hotline set up for social care providers by NHS National Services Scotland reported that it was receiving over one thousand calls a day.

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