SWINNEY: DON’T PUSH IT
Deputy First Minister says rules could be TOUGHENED as more Scots head to work
JOHN Swinney raised the threat of a deeper lockdown yesterday – just days before the latest restrictions come into force.
The Deputy First Minister warned the rules could be toughened if the spread of coronavirus isn’t reduced.
He said the economy was still operating to a larger degree than it had during the first Covid shutdown in March. That means more Scots were being required to head out to work.
Swinney said yesterday “there are further restrictions that could be applied” but added the Scottish Government hoped to avoid doing so.
The warning came amid fears Scotland’s “R” number could be as high as 1.4, as another 64 coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed on Wednesday. A total of 1707 new cases were confirmed – taking the total to 157,079 since the start of the pandemic.
There are 1829 people in hospital confirmed to have Covid, up by 35 in 24 hours.
A tightening of rules, including restrictions on takeaways and click and collect services, will come into effect on Saturday.
Asked whether the rules could be tightened even further, Swinney said: “There is more economic activity happening in Scotland today than was happening immediately after lockdown in March of last year, so there’s quite a number of sectors still able to operate that we haven’t restricted in the way that we did last year. “There are, of course, other things that we could do – we’re trying to avoid doing that because we’re trying to navigate our way through this difficult situation while supporting as much economic and social activity as is safe and supportable at any given time.
“Obviously there are further restrictions that could be applied. We don’t want to have to go there, so I would encourage people to follow the restrictions that are in place.”
Meanwhile, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was forced to say why the national vaccination plan – explaining how 4.5million Scots would get the jab – was removed from the Scottish Government website hours after it was published.
Sturgeon said: “It has been temporarily taken off the website after the UK Government raised concerns about the level of information we included on the projected supply of the vaccine.
We were seeking to be very transparent around all aspects of this, to be clear on the targets we are setting for the numbers of people vaccinated and to give people all the assurances we can, subject to all the caveats we have to put in place about the supply flows that we are expecting.
“But the UK Government has got some commercial confidentiality concerns about that, so we are having a discussion with them about what can be published about the targets we are setting.”
The Scottish Tories’ health spokesman, Donald Cameron, said: “These mistakes potentially endanger supplies and risk impacting the rollout of the vaccine.”