CLYDEBANK home care workers who needed to get tested for Covid-19 were told to travel up to 100 miles to the other side of the country when they tried to book in.

The Scottish Government is now reviewing its Covid-19 testing strategy after the Deputy First Minster was left “frustrated” by the news.

Donald Macaskill, CEO of Scottish Care, said he has received “lots of communication from people who have gone to test centres and not found anyone available to deliver the test”.

He highlighted staff in Clydebank being instructed to travel to Arbroath and Edinburgh for testing – while a care worker in Lanarkshire, whose husband has tested positive for Covid-19, was told her nearest available test centre was Inverness, before finding a slot in Perth.

He added: “We are seeing a deterioration in the ability of home care staff to access tests.

“We are getting a lot better at testing in care homes – that’s been an immense improvement. We almost seem to be getting worse for our home care workers.

“Those workers are especially vulnerable going into individuals’ houses – and we need to get those workers tested.

Read more: Whiteinch mental health charity sees demand increase by 50 per cent since lockdown

“We need to get home care staff back to work. We need an equal priority in testing for them.”

Responding on BBC Good Morning Scotland, Mr Swinney admitted there was “clearly a communication failure” – amid reports of people unable to be tested within seven days.

Asked about the apparent delays for some key workers to be tested, Mr Swinney said: “One of the issues that I would have to say has frustrated us at times, is that we have had more testing capacity available than has been used.”

He added: “I can assure you that the issues that you’re raising – the practical, real, legitimate issues – need to be addressed, so that we can have an efficient testing strategy.

“For somebody to be told ‘look, there’s a test available at Arbroath’, and you’re living in Glasgow, is just not acceptable. I totally recognise that.

“So we have to make sure that the capacity is used to the full throughout the country.

“I live in the Tayside area and I’ve seen NHS Tayside really stretching the delivery of tests and reaching out to organisations asking them, ‘do you have anybody that needs a test? Get them in here and we can get them tested’.

“There are really proactive steps being taken in different parts of the country to reach different groups and to make sure they can be tested, and perhaps we need to have a bit more of that. But we’ll certainly reflect on those points in the course of the review undertaken.”