Nicola Sturgeon has said she “will not hesitate” to diverge Scotland from the rest of the UK’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic if evidence suggests she should do so.
One of the UK Government’s own senior scientific advisers, Sir Jeremy Farrar, warned this weekend the UK is likely to be “one of the worst, if not the worst” affected countries from Covid-19 in Europe.
Sir Jeremy, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said a second or third wave of the virus “was probably inevitable” and there were “undoubtedly lessons to learn” from countries who introduced early mass testing.
Ms Sturgeon said officials need to understand what the impact would be of easing measures during any lockdown exit strategy and warned restrictions are unlikely to be lifted in Scotland any time soon.
“There is an importance at that point to ensure testing, tracing, and isolating is part of that approach. We need to make sure we fully understand the evidence before we start to release of these measures,” she said.
“Will we do this at the same time in Scotland as in the rest of the UK? That will depend on what the evidence tells us. This is not some point of constitutional ideology.
“Ideally, for the reason of simplicity of messaging to people, the more consistency across the UK in what we are doing the better.
“But if the evidence tells us we need to do something different in Scotland to the rest of the UK, or do it on a different timescale, we will not hesitate to do that.”
National clinical director Jason Leitch said on Saturday any action would be tried at a “four-country level” where appropriate but confirmed there could be a scenario “in a few weeks or months where we would do that differently”.
Asked whether Number 10 believed the devolved nations would take a different approach to lockdown, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “To date we have moved in lockstep on the social distancing measures.
“There was a cobra meeting last Thursday, in which the devolved administrations took part, in which they agreed a single way forward in terms of the review process.”
He added: “But it is a matter of fact, they could choose to vary social distancing measures because they do have the power to do so.”
A total of 6,067 people have now tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up 155 from 5,912 the day before, with nine more deaths.
There are currently 211 people in intensive care with either a confirmed or suspected case, a decrease of 10 on Sunday, and 1,797 people are in hospital overall.
Ms Sturgeon said she wished to “sound a note of caution” over the figures because the number of deaths is lower than in previous days and cases are expected to be fewer over the weekend, particularly during the Easter break.
She also confirmed labs in the Tayside and Ayrshire and Arran health board areas had not reported testing figures from the past 24 hours so numbers are expected to jump again in the coming days.
On Wednesday, the National Records of Scotland will publish its second weekly report detailing all deaths where Covid-19 has been listed as a suspected cause.
