Coronavirus – First Minister to update parliament on numbers and guidance

At Holyrood on Tuesday the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, will make a statement to parliament about the updated numbers and also what the Cabinet has agreed to do about the guidance from next week onwards.

The statement will begin at 2.20pm and you can watch on TV or on Parliament TV here.

It is likely that either today or tomorrow the number of people who have died within 28 days of their first lab confirmed report of Covid-19 infection and whose death has been recorded with National Records of Scotland will exceed 10,000.

It is three weeks since new restrictions were announced leading to the cancellation of pantomimes and football matches played behind closed doors. The one metre physical distancing rule was reintroduced and mask wearing in all public places continued. On 21 December when these measures were announced the number of positive cases was 5,242 and the number of people in hospital was 515. Yesterday the number of people in hospital was 1,707.

In an interview on Monday Ms Sturgeon said to STV’s Scotland Tonight: “Sometimes when you hear people talk about learning to live with Covid, what seems to be suggested is that one morning we’ll wake up and not have to worry about it anymore, and not have to do anything to try to contain and control it.

“That’s not what I mean when I say ‘learning to live with it’. Instead, we will have to ask ourselves what adaptations to pre-pandemic life – face coverings, for example – might be required in the longer-term to enable us to live with it with far fewer protective measures.

“We are in a position where we all want to get to as much normality as possible. All of us, me included, really crave that.

“But we need to recognise that this virus, although we hope omicron is milder than previous variants, this virus still takes lives and it still causes significant health impacts for people.

“So we have got to treat it seriously and not underestimate the damage that it can do.”

Commenting ahead of the First Minister’s Covid update on Tuesday Scottish Labour’s Health and Covid Recovery spokesperson Jackie Baillie saying that the statement: “is a chance to take a serious look at where we stand in suppressing this virus, and what the latest data is telling us.

“People and businesses need urgent answers – but too often the SNP have seemed more concerned with spin than facts.

“We need to make sure any and all restrictions are rooted firmly in the evidence, and backed up by proper financial support.

“We also need a real plan to protect health and social care, which have been pushed to breaking point due to staffing shortages. Hospitals up and down the country are struggling to cope, and the lack of social care packages are leaving vulnerable people stranded without support.

“The First Minister must provide the real solutions we need to protect lives and livelihoods through this wave.”

Phyllis Stephen

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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.

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