Scottish health board figures for tests on care home staff and residents reveal a “scandalous” postcode lottery, with significant divergence in how different parts of the country are coping with new testing policy. Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, pledged on 28 May to offer weekly tests to all 50,000 care home workers. Last Friday, after concerns were raised about the uptake of the policy, she sent a strongly worded letter to health board chief executives last Friday, telling them that directives were “not for local interpretation”, and that board-by-board data on the number of completed tests would now be published weekly. The figures show Scotland’s largest health board, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, tested 1,127 care home staff in the past week, compared with Dumfries and Galloway, which tested only four, a large differential even when adjusted for population. Fife, which has around 40 care homes, tested 178 staff and only 30 residents over the past week, although the data does not offer context on whether settings had ongoing coronavirus outbreaks. NHS Borders tested 22 staff and 13 residents over the past week, after ITV Border reported on Tuesday that the health board had written to the Scottish government saying it had “no capacity” to bring in ministers’ policy of regularly testing all staff in care homes. Publishing the tables, the Scottish government added the caveat that the data did not include tests that were carried out by UK routes – regional testing centres and mobile testing – and “therefore is likely to underestimate testing for staff”. Freeman and the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, have come under increasing pressure in recent weeks as they face growing criticism from across the Holyrood chamber over care home deaths, which exceeded those in hospitals for the first time last week according to National Records of Scotland figures. Nearly 1,000 elderly patients were discharged from hospitals into care homes at the start of the pandemic without testing, a figure at first significantly under-reported by the Scottish government, and many staff fear that this had fatal results. The policy to test all hospital patients twice before they are discharged to care homes was only announced on 22 April. At Wednesday’s first minister’s questions, Sturgeon was challenged repeatedly about Freeman’s pledge to test all 50,000 care home workers weekly. She confirmed that 11,000 staff, as well as 15,000 of the country’s 35,000 care home residents, had been tested, figures described as “pathetic” by Scottish Conservative’s leader, Jackson Carlaw. Responding to the league tables, the Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, said the Scottish government was “badly failing” to meet its own targets. “Extending testing to all care home staff must be the immediate and fundamental task of the Scottish government and action must be taken to put the testing strategy back on course,” he said. Alison Johnstone, the Scottish Greens co-convenor, said: “It’s three weeks since the health secretary announced regular testing would begin in our care homes. This is scandalous, particularly at a time when thousands of tests are going unused every day. If there are barriers preventing progress in specific health boards then the government must intervene and offer support where required.” GMB Scotland secretary Gary Smith said any effective testing regime had been undermined “by the lack of political will to deal with the exploitative and precarious working conditions that is endemic across Scottish social care”. He said: “Three months into this crisis, the majority of care workers are still being left to fend on statutory sick pay of less than £96 a week if they fall ill with Covid-19 or must isolate. For the many workers in residential care homes who earn less than £10 an hour the prospect of testing positive for coronavirus means destitution for the length of their recovery.”