The household members of health staff and other key workers across Scotland are to be given priority testing for coronavirus.
Family members with symptoms will be tested if a key worker is living in their household in a bid to allow frontline staff to return to work.
Currently key workers in households with someone displaying symptoms are forced to self-isolate for 14 days even if they themselves are not showing symptoms.
This could mean a nurse or doctor has to stay at home because their child is displaying a fever or a cough.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman is introducing priority testing for these people and said the move would have “the greatest impact in reducing working days lost".
The move aims to allow key workers to return to work if their family member tests negative for the virus.
Freeman said: “It is essential that front-line health and social care staff can remain at work.
“To help to save lives, we must continue to prioritise testing in hospitals.
“All remaining capacity must be used to ensure that critical staff can return to work as soon as possible.
“I am publishing guidance for the NHS to support use of the testing capacity in our laboratories, in so far as it is not needed for essential care, in order to enable health and social care staff to be back at work when that is safe.
“NHS boards will prioritise testing, based on where the pressure is felt most in their workforce and in social care.”
The latest numbers of test results are published at 2pm each day on the Scottish Government website.
