COVID-19 Guidance developed in partnership

The COVID-19 Clinical Guidance Cell was created in February/March 2020 to produce guidance rapidly in order to support clinical decision making in NHSScotland throughout the pandemic about the management of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). The group was chaired by Professor Tom Evans of Glasgow University and originally constituted as a Clinical Cell under the auspices of Health Protection Scotland. On 12 March 2020 the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Scotland asked Prof. Evans to continue to chair the Cell, which would transition to governance under Scottish Government, where it sat with administrative support from the Realistic Medicine Team. 

Initially it provided rapid national advice based on clinical consensus in the absence of existing evidence on COVID-19. As evidence became available a more formalised approach to development and assurance of guidance was required to provide expertise, governance and consistency while maintaining a flexible and rapid process.

From April 2020 until June 2022 SIGN provided methodological expertise, skills and resource to support the Clinical Cell to prioritise, plan and develop national clinical guidance on COVID-19.

In this time HIS coauthored and published with the Clinical Cell:

• nine evidence-based rapid clinical guidance documents (updated as required during the pandemic)
• six Scottish Government Clinical Advice documents
• three high-level pragmatic Clinical Cell guidance documents, and
• one endorsement of a RCPCH guideline.

Over time as care for individuals with COVID-19 was subsumed into routine NHSScotland activities, specific clinical guidance was no longer required and withdrawn. Links to the remaining publications that were not withdrawn during this period are provided on this page for reference.

In April 2020 Scottish Government published a Clinical Advice document for health and social care services which provided a range of clinical, ethical and organisational advice during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to facilitate more co-ordinated access, from December 2020 the clinical advice from this document was moved to the SIGN website where it was available alongside rapid clinical advice on COVID-19 developed by SIGN and the Scottish Government Clinical Guidance Cell. The original Clinical Advice document has been retained on the Scottish Government website and is being amended to include the remaining high-level considerations.

In December 2021, due to developments in the evidence and changes to NHS services, advice on maternity care, community care and management of patients in critical care and emergency departments were no longer deemed current and were withdrawn.