Cluster of Covid cases linked to pharmacy 'contained'

A cluster of coronavirus cases linked to a pharmacy in Inverclyde have been contained, the health secretary has said.

Jeane Freeman said there have been no new cases linked to the Port Glasgow cluster since Saturday and it has “reached the end of the transmission chain”.

Covid-19 cases were linked to the M&D pharmacy, as well as other businesses and a worker at Amazon’s warehouse in Gourock.

Stuart McMillan, the MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, asked the Health Secretary about the cluster during ministerial questions in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.

Ms Freeman said: “I’m very pleased to say that in terms of the Port Glasgow cluster, that members will recall involved a local pharmacy and a local business, there have been no further cases with respect to that cluster since Saturday.

“At this point the incident management team has agreed it can stand down.

“In other words it believes – and has the data before it to tell it this – that it has reached the end of the transmission chain.

“So they have successfully contained that particular outbreak of Covid-19.”

She said lessons could be learned from this, saying it is important for local incident management teams to be able to make decisions within the Test and Protect system.

The Port Glasgow outbreak was “significantly different” to the one in Aberdeen, she added.

Last week, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said 14 cases were associated with the Port Glasgow cluster, all of whom had mild symptoms.

A link was established between the pharmacy cluster and an earlier Covid-19 outbreak at a call centre in Lanarkshire.

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “There was a total of 14 cases who tested positive as part of this cluster.

“None of the cases were experiencing anything but mild symptoms and there have been no new cases identified since the beginning of last week.”