Covid is being blamed for staff shortages in the NHS when the figures do not stack up, according to union leaders.

A report leaked to The Herald shows less than one per cent of employees at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC) were off work this month because of Covid.

Union officials and opposition politicians said the figures would come as a surprise to the public who were being told by health boards and the Scottish Government that staff shortages are attributable to the ongoing pandemic.

Unison blamed “20 years of rampant under-investment and woeful workforce planning” while Scottish Labour said the figures “make it abundantly clear that the SNP has failed to protect staffing levels”.

Figures show that as of October 12, 576 employees were unable to work due to the virus out of around 39,000 – an absence rate 
of 0.76%.

The staff absence rate at NHS GGC due to Covid has not risen above 1.2% at any time this month.

The Scottish Government has called in the military to plug staffing gaps at NHS Lanarkshire and Borders as figures show and Borders as figures show nursing shortages have reached a record high. 

The Herald:

NHS Education for Scotland figures from June reported 4,845 nursing and midwifery vacancies, the highest number since recording started in 2015 and up from 4,494.5 in March 2021.

It comes amid warnings that the NHS is facing its most challenging winter yet. Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said the health service would remain on an emergency footing until the end of March with services bolstered by an extra £300 million.

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It emerged last month that hundreds of staff shortage alerts had been recorded at Scotland’s flagship NHS hospital over the past three years.

Staff at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow have warned of under-staffing on Datix — the electronic incident reporting system — 339 times since 2019.

The official report included 55 “near miss” incidents where there was the potential for patients to be harmed because of staff shortfalls.

Matt McLaughlin, Unison regional organiser, said: “This figure will surprise the public who are being told by politicians and the board that the staffing problems across NHS Glasgow are due to Covid. What there figures do is underline the rampant underinvestment and woeful workforce planning that has dogged NHS Glasgow for two decades.

“Whilst lots of headline grabbing announcement keep getting made, the truth is that staffing levels and bed capacity have been so badly cut over the last 20 years that there simply isn’t capacity in the system. 

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“It’s time the Scottish Government and senior managers at NHS Glasgow undertook an honest review of services and staffing levels and then urgently devised a plan to rectify the mess that they have created.” 

The Glasgow data also shows that 281 employees are currently affected by long Covid, while 21 were absent due to a reaction to vaccinations.

Almost 6% of staff were off work on that day due to other sickness, while almost 14% of the workforce was on annual leave.

The highest Covid absences were in the south and north of Glasgow and among estates and facilities staff, while 16 staff with the title of medical director were absent.

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman, said: “We all know that the pandemic has had an impact on staffing levels, but our NHS has been understaffed 
and under-resourced for far too long.

"These statistics make it abundantly clear that the SNP has entirely failed to protect staffing levels in our NHS and the current staffing crisis is a direct result of their failure.”

Lewis Morrison, chairman of BMA Scotland, added:  “The NHS in Scotland came into this pandemic with major staffing issues and high vacancy rates. 
“Boards and Scottish Government need to take every possible action to protect the wellbeing of existing staff whilst urgently putting in place plans to recruit but crucially retain staff, if NHS Scotland is going to get through this winter.”

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A health board spokesman said: “In common with other services across Scotland, we are experiencing staffing challenges due to the combined issues of demands on services, Covid impacts, wider staff sickness and other absence, as well as staff taking much-deserved annual leave.

"We have taken a number of measures to increase staffing levels across sites and have been able to reassign some non-clinical staff to support frontline operations, and we are starting to see positive changes as a result. 

“We have brought on board 578 newly qualified nurses and we have undertaken targeted redeployment of medical staff, as well as seeking support from clinical academics. 

“We are actively recruiting additional healthcare support workers and taking steps to build our resources in our staff bank, with around 500 more health care support workers joining our bank to support us during winter.”

The Scottish Government said staffing levels were at a record high after an increase of more than 5,000 whole time equivalent staff in the last year.