Staff at Scotland's Test and Protect service are being forced to work under "toxic" conditions as a result of covid cases rocketing in the last month, an MSP has warned.
Scottish Labour's Paul O'Kane raised the issue with Nicola Sturgeon last week and has now written to health secretary Humza Yousaf to call for additional personnel to be hired to ease the burden on existing workers.
He claimed morale was at an "all time low" after the daily number of positive covid tests topped 4,000 at the end of June.
Case numbers have since dropped back below 2,000 but clinical director Jason Leitch has previously admitted the service was "straining" due to demand.
In response, the Scottish Government said calls would only be made to the most urgent cases, while texts will be used "more extensively" for cases deemed low risk.
Determining the priority level of a case will depend on individuals filling out contact tracing forms online.
The First Minister insisted earlier this month the service was coping despite being under pressure.
But O'Kane believes more staff and resources are required to make Test and Protect as effective as possible.
"Test and protect staff are working tirelessly to keep the virus under control, but the government’s failure to invest in the system has made this an impossible task," he said.
“These are, by the government’s own admission, front line workers. The stress they are being put under as they attempt to keep us all safe is utterly unacceptable.
“The SNP must urgently increase capacity and work with staff to ensure they have the resources and the support they need.”
It comes as figures published earlier this month revealed that fewer than half of Scots who have downloaded the contact tracing app are still actively using it - with just 950,000 people still running the app on their smartphones.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Contact tracers are a core part of our frontline pandemic response, and their resilience and adaptability in the wake of rising case numbers in recent weeks has been simply outstanding.
“We continue to work proactively with Health Boards, Directors of Public Health and with the National Contact Centre to tailor our contact tracing response to high case volumes.
"Additionally, we continue to support ongoing recruitment processes in local contact tracing teams to ensure that teams are capable of deploying workforce in line with agreed scheduling requirements.
“As part of our efforts to build a system which can respond to demand, we took steps earlier this year to work with two commercial partners to augment staffing within the National Contact Centre.
"This has helped the system to cope with the pressure it has been placed under in recent weeks. Last week the National Contact Centre was bolstered by the addition of 100 staff.”
