Tag: press briefings

‘A cause of real concern’: Record number of Covid cases in Scotland

4323 positive cases reported yesterday

Statement given by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Tuesday, 24 August:

Good afternoon. The CMO and I will take questions shortly.

However, I’ll give an overview first of where we are with Covid, starting with today’s statistics.

4,323 positive cases were reported yesterday – that’s 14.5% of all tests carried out.

364 people are in hospital – 8 more than yesterday.

And 43 people are in intensive care, which is a rise of 2 from yesterday.

Sadly, a further 10 deaths have been reported in the past 24 hours, which means that the total number of deaths registered, under our daily definition, is now 8,080.

As always, my condolences go to everyone who has lost someone as a result of the virus.

As of this morning, 4,085,552 people have received a first dose of the vaccine.

And 3,587,145 people have received a second dose.

Around 80% of over 18 year olds have now had both doses of the vaccine. That includes 95% of over 40s – which is a genuinely remarkable uptake.

82% of 30 to 39 year olds have had a first dose, and 68% have had both doses. For 18 to 29 years, 74% have had first doses and 41% have had second doses.

16 & 17 year olds started being offered vaccine a couple of weeks ago and 40% have now had their first jag.

So uptake figures are good. But there are still eligible people out there who are not yet vaccinated and that poses a risk – to you if you are one of them and to all of us, because it means our overall level of population immunity is not as high as it could be.

So if you are 16 or over and haven’t yet done so, please get vaccinated now. You just need to turn up at a drop-in centre – you can find out where your nearest centre is by visiting the NHS Inform site, or by checking the social media pages of your local health board.

I have two further issues I want to cover today.

In a moment, I will discuss the overall course of the pandemic – including the rise in cases that we have seen during the last week.

But before that, I want to confirm an announcement made in the last half hour or so.

The Scottish Government has always been committed to the establishment of a statutory public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.

I can confirm that, today, we have started the process of getting the inquiry up and running. It will be established by the end of this year as promised and will take a persons-centered, human rights based approach.

We have just published draft aims and principles for the inquiry which, following consultation between now and the end of September, with interested parties, including bereaved families, are intended to become the formal Terms of Reference.

A copy of the draft and details of how to contribute views can be found on the Scottish Government website.

The Lord Advocate has also begun discussions with the Lord President about appointing a judge to lead the inquiry. It is fully our intention that this will be a judge-led inquiry.

The inquiry will look at all matters related to the handling of the pandemic that were within our devolved competence. This will include, of course, the situation in care homes.

However, we will also liaise closely with the UK Government – and with other devolved governments – on the likely terms of a UK wide inquiry. Where possible it will be important to avoid duplication and overlap to reduce the burden on those giving evidence.

However, the need for co-operation with other governments is not a reason to delay the establishment of our own inquiry.

I believe that a full public inquiry has a very important role to play, both in scrutinising the decisions we took – and indeed continue to take – in the course of the pandemic, and also in identifying and learning lessons for the future.

I therefore believe that it is appropriate to establish that inquiry as soon as possible. The process that we have begun today is an important step towards that.

The second point I want to address is the sharp rise in cases that we have seen in the last few days.

New cases in Scotland have more than doubled during the last week. This is one of the sharpest rises we have seen during the pandemic.

As a result, new cases are now slightly higher than the exceptional levels we saw in early July. In fact today’s daily figure is the largest we have ever recorded.  Though it is worth remembering that we do more testing now than in the early stages of the pandemic.

Now, we always knew that cases were likely to rise as restrictions eased – so to some extent what we are seeing now is not entirely unexpected.

However, the scale of the increase is still a cause of real concern – although context is still important.

We know that vaccination is making a big difference.

Indeed that explains why so many of the new cases we are seeing just now are in younger people less likely to have had both doses of vaccine. Around half of new cases are in people under the age of 25.

We shouldn’t be complacent about that of course. Young people can fall seriously ill from Covid, including through long Covid.

And of course vaccination does not provide anyone – of any age – with 100% protection. In fact around 1/3 of new cases recently, have been in people who had been fully vaccinated.

However, vaccination does make us somewhat less likely to get Covid and significantly less likely to fall seriously ill from Covid.

That means vaccination is still significantly weakening the link between high numbers of new cases and serious harm to people’s health.

That’s why we are able to take a different – much less restrictive – approach to dealing with the virus now than was possible at earlier stages of the pandemic.

And it is worth remembering why this is important for us to do.

Children need to go to school, businesses need to trade more normally, jobs rely on businesses and all of us need to be able to live more freely and to interact with friends, family and wider networks.

Vaccination is helping us do all of that.

But – and this is the difficult part for all of us – even with vaccination, we cannot be totally relaxed about this surge either.

The link between new cases and serious health harms has been weakened, but it has not been completely broken. That means the rise in cases in the last week may well result in more people going to hospital in the coming days, perhaps requiring intensive care treatment and more people dying.

It also means that if the surge continues or accelerates – and if we start to see evidence of a substantial increase in serious illness as a result – we cannot completely rule out having to reimpose some restrictions.

Of course, we hope not to have to do that – and if we did, we would be as limited and proportionate as possible.

However – as has been the case throughout – what happens in the next few weeks will depend to some extent on all of us.

This is yet another fragile – and potentially very pivotal – moment in our journey through the pandemic.

It is a moment to remember that – even though most restrictions have been lifted – the virus is still circulating. And the Delta variant is very transmissible.

So we need to continue to take care and think about how, in our own behaviours, we can limit the ability of the virus to spread.

Indeed, in some ways, the basic precautions we can all take have become more important – not less – as life has returned so much more to normal.

So I am asking everyone today to do the following – for the sake of ourselves and each other:

First, if you are eligible and haven’t yet done so, please get vaccinated. This remains the single most important thing we can all do to keep each other safe.

The reverse of that is equally true – not getting vaccinated is putting yourself and others at greater risk.

Second, please test yourself regularly – that way, if you have the virus but don’t have symptoms, you have a chance of picking that up before going to work or out socialising and inadvertently passing it to others.

Free lateral flow tests are available by post through the NHS inform website, or for collection from test sites and local pharmacies.

If you test positive through one of these lateral flow devices – or if you have symptoms of the virus – make sure that you self-isolate, and book a PCR test.

Third, stick to the rules still in place.

For example wear face coverings in shops and public transport – this is a reasonably simple and straightforward way in which we can protect each other in indoor settings.

And lastly, be mindful of the basic steps we can take to reduce risk. Indeed, make this a moment when we all remind ourselves to keep doing these things.

Wash your hands and surfaces as regularly as possible.

Even though it’s not the law any more, keep a safe distance from people in other households if you can.

Continue to minimise physical contact where possible – like handshaking, for example.

Avoid crowded indoor places.

And meet outdoors as much as possible, especially for as long as we have reasonable weather. If you are indoors, open windows – the better ventilated a room is, the safer it is.  

It is vital at this juncture that we remember to do all of these things. As we head into autumn and winter, these basic steps might also help us limit spread of flu and other viruses too.

In the coming days, we will also be liaising with businesses to encourage compliance with basic mitigations too. In particular, I am today reminding businesses to continue to support home working for now where possible.

We have come a long way and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. In so many ways, things are better.

But like other countries in this global pandemic, we face a challenging period ahead again.

Let’s come together again to get through it.

Let’s keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.

And let’s maintain the progress that we’ve all worked so hard for.

Thank you.

Sturgeon slams ‘despicable’ COVID scammers

Statement given by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at a media briefing in St Andrew’s House yesterday (Tuesday 15 September):

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us again today.

I will start with the usual run through of the daily statistics with apologies in advance. Parts of my briefing today are a little bit technical because it’s about how we report figures and while it might seem a bit difficult to follow today, what I’m going to report to you, particularly around people in hospital, is in the interest of making these figures more accurate and more transparent as we go into the next phase of tackling the pandemic.

But I can report firstly today, that the total number of positive cases reported yesterday was 267. This represents 3.6% of people newly tested.

101 of those cases were in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 59 were in in Lanarkshire, 53 were in Lothian and 13 were in Ayrshire and Arran.

The remaining 41 were spread amongst the other seven mainland health board areas.

However to be clear, and this is the point I want to stress today, these, as indeed our daily figures always are, are test results that were reported yesterday.

Because of the backlog in the UK wide system that I referred to yesterday, this figure will include – a bit more than it normally would – results from swabs taken over the past few days.

We hope that the backlog of the past few days will have worked its way through the system shortly.

And just to be clear, to reassure you, for the purposes of our trend analysis, tests are looked at by day of the sample, not just by date of reporting, to ensure that we are tracking the increase in cases accurately. From that analysis of course, right now unfortunately, we do know that cases are rising .

Now as I said yesterday, I do have a concern about the capacity constraints right now within the UK wide system – for Scotland in recent days, just to be clear, this has not been an issue of access to testing slots, regional testing centres or mobile testing units but instead it’s been one of access to sufficient lighthouse laboratory processing.

And it has been this that has led to a backlog in the system and longer turnaround times for tests than we want to be the case.

Now as this is a UK wide system, we are not able to resolve this on our own. And the issues are impacted by demand elsewhere in the UK.

To that end, I had a conference call, a constructive conference call, last night with Matt Hancock, UK Health Secretary and Dido Harding, who is head of the UK testing system, to seek firstly assurances that Scotland is and will continue to get fair access to the UK wide laboratory capacity and also to discuss how we can resolve these issues. I hope to see improvement in next few days, but of course I will continue to provide updates.

I also, and this takes me into the slightly technical bit of the briefing, I want to provide some context before providing today’s update for the number of people in hospital with Covid.

Now, if you cast your mind back a couple of weeks now I think if you are one of the regular viewers of this briefing, I indicated then we were looking at how we report on numbers of people in hospital.

Under that measure, the one we have been using up until now, lots of people are classified as being Covid patients, even if they have recovered from Covid and are now being treated for a condition that is unrelated to it.

That old measure was providing accurate information at the peak the epidemic of this first phase back in the year when there were 1,500 Covid patients in hospital.

But as the pandemic has progressed, we have been reporting a higher number of hospital cases than is probably justified and that’s the issue I alluded to a couple of weeks ago.

For example in late August, Scotland officially accounted for almost one third of the hospital patients with Covid in the UK – despite having one twelfth of the UK’s population, and a relatively low incidence of the virus at that stage.

To try to ensure we are no longer counting patients who no longer really have Covid, we are from now, and I’ll report under the new measurement today, but then regularly from tomorrow, we’re moving to a new definition.

From now on, we will only count patients who first test positive for Covid during their current stay in hospital, or in the two weeks before their admission.

In addition, we will stop classifying them as Covid patients, for statistical purposes after 28 days in hospital – or 28 days after the date of their positive test, whichever is later.

This new measure will be an improvement on the old one – but it is important for me to point out that it will not be absolutely perfect.

The effects of Covid sometimes require hospital stays of longer than 28 days, and so a small number of patients with Covid may not be captured by the measure I’ve just outlined there

I have therefore asked Public Health Scotland to develop analysis about patients who unfortunately end up spending longer in hospital.

But overall, this new measure will give us a better picture both of the current situation in hospitals, and crucially, given the phase of the pandemic we are going into, it will be more sensitive to the changes in hospital admissions caused by new cases. So it will enable us to more accurately reflect and report any increase in hospital admissions over the next period.

So, under the old measure, I would be telling you, and I am going to tell you, that 262 patients are in hospital. That is two fewer than yesterday.

But that is the last time I’m going to give you that old measure, instead I’m going to move to the new and more accurate measure and I will use that solely from tomorrow onwards and under that measure, as of today there are 48 patients in hospital under that more narrow but more accurate measurement and we will be able to track it better now the increase in hospital admissions from here on in.

And using the new definition, I can report, there are six people are in intensive care. Under the old definition I would have been reporting seven in intensive care so clearly the change in measurement doesn’t have the same impact towards numbers in intensive care as it does on broader hospital numbers. .

And finally, in terms of my daily statistics update, I regret to have to report that in the past 24 hours, one additional death has been registered of a patient who first tested positive over the previous 28 days.

That means that the total number of deaths, under this daily measurement, is now 2,500.

That total serves again to remind us of the impact of this virus and why we can never, ever be complacent about the risks it poses and I want again to pass on my condolences to everybody who has lost a loved one – including of course everyone who is grieving as a result of the death that was registered yesterday.

There are a couple of other issues I want to address before Jason Leitch and I take questions from the media as normal.

The first is just to report here, we made this public last night but I thought it was worth reporting, that we had a meeting yesterday as I indicated earlier yesterday we would, to discuss the current position in Greater Glasgow and Clyde

And the good news is, that early indications suggest that the restrictions in place in Glasgow City, East and West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire might be helping to slow down the increase in new cases. So that at this stage is positive.

But the number of new cases in these parts of Greater Glasgow and Clyde remains very high and is still increasing, all be it, we think, at a slower rate than would’ve been the case without these restrictions being in place. So taking all of that into account and the local authorities for these areas were present at the meeting yesterday. We agreed that the existing restrictions should remain in place for a further week and then they will be reviewed again at that stage.

That means people in these areas, Glasgow City, East or West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire should not visit other households at all.

Those same restrictions now also apply as of last Friday, in North and South Lanarkshire,

In all of these seven local authority areas, you should not host someone in your home – unless it is for essential care purposes. And you should not visit someone else in their home – again unless it’s for care purposes or delivery of shopping to a venerable or elderly person and that is regardless of where they live. So I live in Glasgow City, I can’t have people in my home but equally I can’t go and visit my parents for example, who live in Ayrshire and Arran which is not one of these affected areas.

The second issue I want to cover today relates to the Test and Protect service.

We are aware that some fake callers are pretending to work for Test and Protect , and are trying to con people by claiming that payment is needed for a test.

Sadly, this reminds us that there are always a small number of people, a tiny minority , but never the less they’re there, who will try to exploit any situation they can to defraud people. And it is truly and utterly despicable particularly at this time of crisis that we are living though.

But in light of it, I wanted to take the opportunity today to remind you and ask you to remind others that you know, that Covid tests are free, and will always be free for those who need them.

Nobody from Test and Protect will ever ask you for financial information –they will never ask you for your bank or credit card details – and they will never try to sell you anything.

The only thing Test and Protect staff will ask you about, is where you’ve been and details of the people you have been in contact with.

Genuine contact tracers will often also first send you a text to let you know that you will shortly receive a call from NHS Scotland.

Callers will always introduce themselves and state the reason for their call. They will know your name. They will ask you for details of people you have come into contact with, in a relevant time period. They will tell you that you will receive further information by e-mail or post.

And they will always call from the same number – 0800 030 8012 – and they will give you the option of calling back on that number if you need to verify the service.

There is a lot of useful information about this on the Coronavirus sections of the Trading Standards Scotland website, and the Advice Direct Scotland website.

You can report any concerns about calls you have received to Advice Direct Scotland. And if you are unfortunate enough to have been the victim of a scam, or an attempted scam, you should contact the police on 101.

Fundamentally, if a person claiming to be a contact tracer is asking about things that aren’t necessary – in particular your bank details or computer passwords – then put the phone down straight away because they are not a legitimate contact tracer .

As I mentioned earlier, if you do get phoned by a legitimate contact tracer you have the option of phoning them back – on 0800 030 8012 – if you want to verify the call.

Genuine contact tracers will only ever ask about your movements, and details of the people you have been in contact with. This is a small minority of people, hopefully it won’t happen to any of you watching, but I thought it was important to take the opportunity to stress what will and will not be asked of you if you do get one of these calls, so that together we can make sure these people who attempt theses scams, these despicable people don’t get anywhere in Scotland.

The final point I want to make just to round off, is to remind you of the new rules which came into force yesterday, and of our other important public health guidance.

As you should all know, unless you live in one of the areas I’ve already spoken about where stricter restrictions are in place, no more than six people can now meet up together – and those six people can come from no more than two households.

Children under the age of 12, do not count as part of the total of six, but they do count towards the total for households. I said on Friday I would look at further advice on whether we could give greater flexibility for children and I hope to give the outcome of that later this week.

That rule – six people and two households – applies indoors and outdoors: in homes, pubs and restaurants, and in outdoor spaces such as parks and private gardens.

So please make sure that you are not breaching those limits.

This step – limiting the number of people and households you interact with – is a tough one and it’s really not an easy one or a welcome one at all. But it is a really vital step in helping us to keep the virus under control by limiting the interactions that we know are most likely to cause it to spread.

Please also, if you haven’t already done so, download the Protect Scotland app if you can. I know that last time I looked this morning 950,000 of you have already done that, but we want as many people as possible to do so.

It is very quick and easy to do. It’s a simple but very powerful way of all of us as individuals helping the country collectively.

And as always, and this will be my final comment, remember all the other things and we all need to do to try to minimise the risk of Covid spreading and all of that of course is encapsulated in FACTS. The five golden rules to try to minimise the spread.

• Face coverings should be worn in enclosed spaces
• Avoid crowded places.
• Clean your hands and hard surfaces regularly.
• keep Two metres away from other households
• and Self isolate, and book a test, if you have symptoms.

So thank you for bearing with me though what I know was a bit of a technical briefing today. Occasionally they will be like this because we are trying as we are go through the pandemic to make sure that we are reporting information in a clear, accurate and as transparent way as possible.

As we go through different phases sometimes that means changing definitions that we have used previously and so explaining that takes a bit of time and hopefully over the next period, these things will become much clearer for all of us.

Thank you for listening.

Exam grades: ‘We got it wrong’ – First Minister

Statement given by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the media briefing in St Andrew’s House this afternoon:

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. I’ll start with the usual update on the most recent Covid-19 statistics for Scotland.

I can confirm that an additional 29 positive cases were confirmed yesterday. That represents 0.8% of the people who were newly tested yesterday, and it takes the total number of cases in Scotland to 19,027.

A full health board breakdown will be available later, but the provisional information I have is that 18 of the 29 cases are in the Grampian health board area.

It is not yet clear how many are connected to the ongoing outbreak in Aberdeen and I will say a little bit more about the situation there shortly.

A total of 267 patients are currently in hospital with confirmed Covid, that is six more than yesterday and three people are in intensive care and that  is the same as yesterday.

I’m also very pleased to say that yet again in the past 24 hours, no deaths were registered of patients who tested positive over the previous 28 days and therefore the number of deaths under that measurement remains 2,491. Obviously though the total number of deaths still reminds us every single day of the dreadful impact of Covid and my condolences again go to everyone who has suffered loss.

And as always, I want to thank everyone who is working hard to help our country through this pandemic. 

I have two things I want to update on today. The first is the current situation in Aberdeen and then I want to say a bit about the reopening of schools from tomorrow.

I’ve just mentioned that in the last 24 hours, 18 new cases were confirmed in the Grampian Health Board area.

That means that in the 15 days since 26th of July, a total of 231 cases in Grampian have been identified.

We understand that 157 of those are linked in some way to the Aberdeen cluster.

And a total of 852 contacts have now been identified from those 157 cases.

Now it’s important to stress that those 852 contacts might not equate exactly to 852 people – there is likely to be some overlap between different cases.

But that figure helps to give some idea, I think, of the scale of the tracing exercise which is underway in Aberdeen.

The majority of those contacts have already been traced, and tracing procedures are in place for the others. And that in itself shows how hard and well our Test and Protect teams are working – even in relation to a large and complex cluster.

In addition, I hope that the measures that we put in place in Aberdeen last week will help to slow and then stop transmission before it becomes widespread within the community.

And the advice we have put in place about not travelling to or from Aberdeen – unless absolutely essential – should reduce the risk of cases spreading from Aberdeen to other parts of Scotland.

That said we do expect the number of cases and contacts in the Aberdeen cluster to rise further in the days ahead. But I want to take the opportunity again to thank all those working hard locally to seek to contain this cluster as quickly and as effectively as possible.

More generally, the events of the past fortnight have been a reminder of how fragile Scotland’s overall position is and that is the same in countries across the world.

We have seen and we are still seeing, thankfully, low rates of transmission in most parts of the country.

But we have also seen in Aberdeen how quickly that can change, it can literally change in an instant. And it will change, if we drop our guard.

So, for that reason, whenever you are out and about, please continue to think about your own actions, not just in Aberdeen but wherever you happen to be in the country.

Let me remind you that no more than three households should be meeting together indoors at any one time – in each other’s homes, and in places like bars and restaurants.   It is important to recognize that household limit applies in places like bars and restaurants just as it does in your own home.

And people from different households should be staying physically distant from each other at all times. And again that is something we advise strongly if you are in a bar, just as we do if you are meeting other households in your own house.

And each of us should be thinking about our recent behaviour. All of us asking ourselves have we been a bit more relaxed about things like physical distancing when we’ve been meeting up with friends recently?

Are we creating more bridges that allow this virus to spread, to travel from us to another household, or from another household to us?

Because if we are doing that, and I think it is inevitable that many of us will have dropped our guard that little bit, then now is the time to recognise that and try to rectify it, because the fact is we all still need to be really careful right now. And Aberdeen is very hard proof of that fact.

Nobody’s life, while our lives have regained a bit of normality in recent weeks,  nobody’s life should be feeling absolutely normal at the moment. Covid is still present, and we know it is still highly infectious.

So all of us have a big role to play in trying to keep it under control. And one reason why that is so important, why suppressing and hopefully eliminating the virus is so important, is that it is the best way of ensuring that schools can reopen, and then stay open, safely. That has to be a priority for all of us, and it is very much a priority for Government.

Earlier this morning I visited West Calder High School in West Lothian, to see for myself the preparations that they are making for reopening this week.

Like many schools across the country, they are having a phased return.

Tomorrow is an in-service day for staff.

Wednesday is for students in secondary school years 1 to 3.  And Thursday is for students in year 1, and years 4 to 6.

And then from Friday, all students will be in the school full-time.

I think it is worth saying that for students and staff, school will feel different to how it was before. 

There will, for example, be a lot more handwashing.

Some schools will have staggered starts and lunchbreaks – at West Calder for example, school lunches have to be ordered on an app in the morning and collected at lunchtime.

And for staff, while young people are not required to keep two metres apart within schools, teachers and other adult staff do need to keep that distance.

Now, I know that there will be nerves and anxiety for children, parents and teachers this week and I think that is entirely understandable.

Hopefully induction days that I know are happening in many schools will help young people to get used to the changes, and to being around each other again.

But fundamentally all of us know that the reopening of schools is essential for children’s education, personal development and indeed I think for  their general wellbeing and happiness.

So what we are doing, is trying to ensure that the reopening is safe and effective.

I was really impressed and reassured this morning by what I saw of the preparations at West Calder, and I know those preparations are being repeated in schools right across the country, and I am very grateful to everyone – teachers, teaching assistants, local authority workers and all school staff – who are enabling schools to safely reopen.

There are three other quick points I just want to make in relation to schools.

The first is that although schools can reopen from tomorrow, this reopening does not yet apply to unregulated indoor activities for school children – for example some indoor play or activity clubs, and some faith-related education such as Sunday schools and madrassahs. They should not start again until agreed guidance is in place. 

The second point is about travel.  We know that the reopening of schools will put extra pressure on public transport and on our road network.

So Transport Scotland is today launching a Travel Safe campaign. It asks commuters to help the transport system by only travelling if you need to, and by working at home when you can.

But if you do need to travel, please walk, cycle or wheel to work whenever that is possible.

And if you need to use public transport or if you need to drive, which will be the case for some people, think about whether you could make your journey outside of the peak times.

The continued need for physical distancing on public transport, as schools reopen and as more business activities resume, will put more pressure on transport services. So the Travel Safe campaign is intended to help you think about ways in which you can help with that.

The final point I want to cover today is for those pupils, and indeed parents of pupils, who received their SQA results last week.

John Swinney will make a statement in parliament tomorrow about the steps  we intend to take to address concerns about this year’s results.

And at the heart of that, we will be taking steps to ensure that every young person gets a grade that recognises the work they have done.

Let me be clear about this – in a very difficult and unprecedented situation, we took decisions that we thought, on balance, were the right ones, and we took them with the very best of intentions. These were broadly the same decisions that have been reached for England and Wales as well.

But our concern – which was to make sure that the grades young people got, were as valid as those they would have got in any other year – perhaps led us to think too much about the overall system and not enough about the individual pupil.

And that has meant that too many students feel that they have lost out on grades they should have had – and also that has happened  as a result, not of anything they’ve done, but because of a statistical model or an algorithm.  In addition, that burden has not fallen equally across our society.

So despite our best intentions, I do acknowledge that we did not get this right and I am sorry for that. But instead of doing what politicians  sometimes do and dig our heels in, we are determined to acknowledge that and to put it right.

There are, of course, deeper questions that we will need to resolve for the longer term – about the impact of exams on the attainment gap, and on the difference between exams and teacher judgment.

But the most immediate challenge is to resolve the grades awarded to pupils this year.

As I have said we will set out our approach tomorrow to the Scottish Parliament, but let me be clear that we will not expect every student who has been downgraded to appeal.

This situation is not the fault of students, and so it should not be on students to fix it.  That is on us, and we will set out tomorrow exactly how we intend to do that.

These are the two main issues I wanted to cover today.

Obviously we will talk a lot more about both of these issues, and no doubt others, as the week progresses.

Before I hand over, first to the Health Secretary and then to the Chief Medical Officer, let me just close by reminding everybody again of FACTS – the five rules that we all must follow to stay as safe as possible.

  • Face coverings in enclosed spaces
  • Avoid crowded places.
  • Clean your hands and hard surfaces regularly.
  • Two metre distancing remains the overall rule.
  • and self isolate, and book a test, if you have symptoms.

If we all comply with these five golden rules, then we will collectively reduce the risk of this virus spreading.

So I encourage everybody to do that and to do that rigorously because it is in the interest of all of us, individually, in the interest of our families, but also in the interests of the country as a whole.

First Minister: ‘never underestimate how cruel a virus this can be’

Statement given by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the media briefing in St Andrew’s House yesterday (Wedneday 29 July):

Good afternoon everyone thank you for joining us. As usual I will start with the most recent statistics on Covid.

I can report that an additional 22 positive cases were confirmed yesterday. That represents 0.7% of those who were newly tested yesterday, and it takes the total number of cases in Scotland now to 18,580.

The health board breakdown of these new cases will be available later but my provisional information is that 14 of the 22 are in Greater Glasgow & Clyde area.

I have also been advised that a possible cluster of cases is currently under investigation by Greater Glasgow & Clyde.

An Incident Management Team meeting will take place later this afternoon, which I hope will give more detail, and an update will be provided after that. But I want to give an assurance today as I always do that all new positive cases are thoroughly investigated for any links and Test and Protect of course gets to work to make sure that all contacts are appropriately traced.

I can also report today that a total of 260 patients are currently in hospital who have been confirmed as having the virus. That is 4 fewer than yesterday.

And a total of 2 people last night were in intensive care with confirmed Covid and that is no change on the figure yesterday.

Finally, I am very pleased to say that yet again during the last 24 hours, no deaths were registered of patients confirmed through a test in the previous 28 days as having COVID-19. The total number of deaths, under this particular measure, therefore remains 2,491.

In addition though, National Records of Scotland has just published its regular weekly report. Unlike the daily figures, it includes deaths of people who have been confirmed as having Covid by a test within the previous 28 days.

But the NRS report also covers cases where the virus has been entered on a death certificate as a suspected or contributory cause of death – even if its presence was not confirmed by a test, or if the test had been more than 28 days previously.

That is a wider measure, and therefore captures more cases and between our daily figure and the NRS report, let me be very clear that all deaths that are associated with Covid either on a confirmed basis or suspected or contributory are captured and reported.

The latest NRS report covers the period to Sunday 26 July. Let me remind you at that point, according to our daily figures, 2,491 deaths of people who had tested positive for the virus had been registered but none of those deaths were registered in the 7 days up to Sunday.

Today’s NRS report shows that, by Sunday, the total number of registered deaths with either a confirmed or a presumed link to the virus was 4,201. Of those, 8 were registered in the seven days up to Sunday. That is an increase of 2 from the week before.

National Records of Scotland has also reported that the total number of deaths recorded last week – from all causes not just the virus – was 24 lower than the five year average for the same time of year.

Now I want to say just a bit more about the fact that the number of Covid deaths rose very slightly last week – especially given that we reported no deaths at all over that period in our daily figures. 4 of the 8 deaths reported by NRS were in hospital; 2 were in care homes; and 2 were in other settings – for example at home.

Now the reason why the 4 deaths in hospitals weren’t captured by our daily figures, is that those daily figures –as I’ve mentioned already today– record people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid.

However some people who test positive receive care for more than 28 days afterwards, but sadly some of them do not manage to recover.

So if these people die after the initial 28 days, but have Covid recorded on the death certificate as a contributing factor, then they would be included in the NRS report, but not in the daily figures but again that is to give you assurance that all deaths associated with Covid are being captured and reported between our daily figures and the National Records of Scotland report .

I want to make just two more general points about today’s figures, .

First obviously, any increase in deaths, however small it might be, is regrettable and very unwelcome . But when we have very low levels as we do now thankfully – fluctuation is to be expected.

However, the second point is this one. These figures are a reminder of the continuing impact of the pandemic – and of the fact that, despite the progress we have undoubtedly made, we should never underestimate how cruel a virus this can be.

We’ve always got to remember that every single life lost to this illness, is of an individual who is being mourned by friends and loved ones. I want to send again today my condolences to everyone who is grieving as a result of Covid.

I also want, as always, to thank our health and care workers for the extraordinary work you continue to do, in what remains very testing circumstances. You have mine and the entire Scottish Government’s gratitude for that.

Now, I have two other issues that I want to briefly update on today and both of them relate to further improvements to our presentation of Covid data.

We have had some discussions with the other nations of the UK about providing regular and consistent reports on the distribution of personal and protective equipment, PPE. Our first report will be published on the Scottish Government website today.

That shows that in the past week alone, more than 16 million items of PPE have been distributed across Scotland by National Services Scotland. These include almost 12 million gloves, 3 million masks, and nearly 1 million aprons. In total, since the 1 March, more than 362 million items have been distributed.

These figures give some idea of the scale of the ongoing work to ensure that health and care workers have the equipment they need to keep them safe and I am grateful to everyone involved in that effort.

In addition, from 2pm today, Public Health Scotland will be presenting a much wider range of Covid information on its website. And doing so, in what I hope you will find to be, a more accessible format.

It will publish our new Covid dashboard which will include summary data of recent cases and deaths, broken down both by health board and by local authority area.

And it includes much more detailed information according to the date of someone’s test result, and also the date on which people have sadly died. So you can, for example, find out exactly how many women or men within a certain age range, tested positive in Scotland on a specific day.

We know from the information requests that we receive, that there is a desire from many people to have easier access to more detailed data about the pandemic – both in terms of the current position, and of course the risk we will continue to face in the weeks ahead but also in terms of how the pandemic has developed over the past few months.

We hope that the new dashboard will help anybody who is interested, to see data about the pandemic in their area or across the whole of the country.

One of the features of the dashboard is that it will use local data to colour-code local authority areas, based on the proportion of neighbourhoods which exceed 55 confirmed cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period.

An average-sized neighbourhood on the map – which would have about 4,000 people – would need to have three cases in the previous week to exceed that limit.

That figure is considerably higher than the current prevalence of Covid within the population, and so – in contrast to the peak of the pandemic – many local authority areas are currently likely to be shown as having no neighbourhoods above that threshold.

That, however, should not be taken as a sign that there is no cause for concern or a signal for any of us to be complacent and I want to stress that very clearly.

The new figures will show, as the figures I report every day right now thankfully show, that Covid is at low levels in Scotland and we have all worked very hard to get to this position. But we also know from the case numbers I have reported today for example that the virus is still circulating in Scotland. And the clusters we have seen, and undoubtedly continue to see, demonstrate how quickly the virus can spread again, if we give it the opportunity to do so.

In addition to that as I was talking about yesterday, news reports from other countries – in Europe and around the world – remind us of how easily progress against Covid can start to go into reverse.

For that reason, when I announce the outcome of the Scottish Government’s formal review of the Covid restrictions in Parliament tomorrow, I’m likely, very likely, to adopt a very cautious approach.

We have made some very significant changes over the last three weeks – including the resumption of indoor hospitality and tourism, and it is still too early to be completely assured about the impact of these or hopefully the absents of the impact of these.

And we also intend to make some very major changes over the next three weeks – for example I hope I can confirm tomorrow the pausing of shielding at the end of the month, and as you know it is our central objective for the next three weeks to get schools back full time from 11 August.

Ensuring that those changes can take place, without raising the prevalence of the virus too far, is not going to leave us very much room for many other immediate changes.

I know sometimes what appear to be anomalies right now, about what is allowed and not allowed can seem confusing – although I would assure you that there are rational explanations for what might appear on the surface to be inconsistencies.

But more fundamentally, and this is a key point that I want to leave you with, we can’t just look at whether an individual change is safe, although that is an important part of our consideration – we also have to consider the cumulative impact of all of the changes we make, and we have to be sensible about the order in which we make changes so we don’t create a situation in which we are doing too much too quickly and therefore giving the virus a chance to overwhelm us again.

So there will be, I’m sure parts of our economy and people, who will be disappointed tomorrow if changes they want to hear are not happening as quickly as they would like and I recognise that and I am genuinely, as I always have been, sorry about that. I don’t relish any of the implications and consequences of what we are dealing with right now.

Where we are unable to move to a further opening up tomorrow, we will indicate as far as we can. indicative dates for the future even though they will be conditional on continued suppression of the virus.

As ever, the decisive factor in ensuring how quickly we can make further changes in the weeks ahead, will be how successful we continue to be at driving this virus to low levels and keeping it at the low levels we see right now.

And as ever, that depends on all of us. Each and every one of us have to ensure that we do everything we can to avoid creating opportunities for the virus to spread.

What I’m about to say, firstly you’ve heard me say it before and secondly it is not intended as a criticism.

We are all human beings and even the politicians among us, and human behaviour is very instinctive and I know, and I totally know from my own observations and I know how hard it is in my own life, that some of the things that we have been getting used to doing for the past four months, physically distancing in particular, we are all perhaps beginning to just drop our guard a little bit on these things.

And this is a moment and I say this directly and I will just say it from the bottom of my heart, it is a moment for all of us just to pause and think about whether that is the case and if we are dropping our guard and letting those standards slip, give ourselves a bit of a shake and make sure we do all the things that we have been advised to do rigorously in the period ahead and that is of course encapsulated in the FACTS advice that I always end with and that I will end with today.


• Please wear face coverings, it’s mandatory as you know in shops and on public transport and I think you will see high levels of compliance with that but in any enclosed space where you might find it more difficult to physical distance, wear a face covering. It gives an added bit of protection against transmission.
• Continue to avoid crowded places. Even if they are outdoors, crowded places wherever they are, increase the risks of this virus spreading, so avoid crowded places.
• Remember to clean your hands and clean any hard surfaces that you’re touching. This one will be cleaned after this briefing today because the virus stays around on hard surfaces and we know it can spread through lack of hand hygiene. So clean hands, clean hard surfaces. .
• Keep a two metre distance. And this is the one more than any of the others that we all need to check ourselves on. Keep a 2 metre distance unless you’re in a premises where there is permission to go to 1 metre with appropriate mitigations the general rule remains 2 metres .
• and lastly Self isolate, and book a test, if you have symptoms.

Test and Protect right now is performing I think well and those who are working through Test and Protect are doing a sterling job when outbreaks and clusters appear.

But they need the cooperation of each and every one of us, so please make sure if you are experiencing a cough, a fever, or if you are aware of a change in a loss in your sense of taste or smell, then you self-isolate immediately and you take a test immediately because that helps Test and Protect do its job.

If we all follow all of these things, we don’t take away the risks of this virus unfortunately it’s not that simple but we do significantly reduce those risks and we collectively try to protect the progress that we’ve made and hopefully keep that progress and keep this virus under control, so thanks all of you for listening.

COVID-19 Cluster Identified within Greater Glasgow and Clyde

A cluster of eight positive COVID-19 cases have been identified in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area and a thorough investigation is underway.

Contact tracing of individuals has identified a number of businesses across Greater Glasgow and Clyde including a pharmacy in Inverclyde as being linked to the cases.

An NHSGGC-led Incident Management Team is working with Scottish Government, Health Protection Scotland (HPS) and local environmental health teams to provide advice and support.  

None of the cases are experiencing anything but mild symptoms.

Close contacts are being advised to self-isolate and other identified contacts are being followed up and given appropriate advice.

To respect and maintain patient confidentiality no further details will be released at this time.