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COVID-19 Recovery Committee outlines findings on excess deaths since the start of the pandemic

  • Area of Work: The ALLIANCE
  • Type: News Item
  • Published: 3rd May 2022

The Committee undertook a short inquiry to consider the extent to which excess deaths were caused by COVID-19 as opposed to other causes.

Following its inquiry into excess deaths in Scotland since the start of the pandemic, the Scottish Parliament’s COVID-19 Recovery Committee has written to the Scottish Government with its findings and recommendations (this link will take you away from our website).

The purpose of the inquiry was to examine the extent to which excess deaths were caused by COVID-19 as opposed to other causes, such as the indirect health impacts of the pandemic.

The main message from the inquiry was that it is still too early to be definitive about the exact impact that the pandemic has had in terms of excess deaths in Scotland. However, it requests that the Scottish Government set out how to promote and encourage the use of NHS services for non-COVID conditions and plans for the delivery of GP services in the future.

The ALLIANCE provided written and oral evidence to the committee inquiry. The letter highlights some of our key points:

“The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland commented on the perception that non COVID-19 patients should not seek appointments with their GP and that people found it difficult to get GP appointments if they did not have COVID-19. Rob Gowans, representing the Alliance, highlighted their research which showed that around a third of people felt that their expectations were not met when they called the GP surgery citing uncomfortableness with the triage system and concern about the effectiveness of telephone appointments.

“The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland said that excess deaths in the most deprived areas were twice as great than in the least deprived areas and argued for better data and, in particular, data that is disaggregated by age, sex, race and other aspects in order to understand the impacts fully.”

Read our full written response.

You can read the Official Report from the oral evidence session on the Scottish Parliament website (this link will take you away from our website).

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