First Minister puts focus on ‘caution’ in lifting lockdown
THOUSANDS of people have been given the second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed. The total number of vaccinations given has now reached 1,354,966.
Sturgeon said there were another 34,892 vaccinations carried out on Wednesday.
In addition, 3760 people received a second dose.
The First Minister confirmed all over-70s have now been offered the vaccination and that the take-up rates have been “extraordinarily high”.
A total of 69% of 65 to 69-yearolds have been offered first doses and the programme is “on track” to complete that group by early March.
While the vaccination figures and falling number of Covid cases were encouraging, the First Minister warned that the road map out of lockdown, due to be published next week, will still need to be cautious.
Sturgeon said she wants the current lockdown to be the last, but stressed that to ensure no further lockdowns are required, the lifting of restrictions must be sustainable.
She explained: “If it is quick at the expense of sustainability, the danger is as we start to look at next winter again, we will be back in lockdown.”
She said although cases and test positivity are declining in Scotland, the road map will still be “deliberately quite cautious, because none of us want to set this progress back”.
She added: “I want, if at all possible, this lockdown to be the last one we need. That means we need to make our recovery out of lockdown not just as quick as possible, but perhaps more importantly as sustainable as possible so we keep going in the right direction.”
Sturgeon set out that she has “always been part of the school of thought that says we should be seeking to eliminate” the virus – though she accepted this might mean “something slightly different” in Scotland compared to New Zealand.
She said: “That doesn’t change the overall objective.
“We have since last spring, early summer, in Scotland, said our objective should be to eliminate, by which I mean suppress to as low as possible a level and then try to keep it there.
“Now is that feasible? The evidence and the work that has been done around genomic sequencing says yes, because what it shows is we actually achieved that in the summer in Scotland last year.
“Most of the strains of the virus that had been circulating in Scotland were eliminated and then what happened is it re-seeded, mainly from travel, some overseas travel, some from travel across the UK.
“So we know we can do that. I think we’re still some way off it on the data we have got just now, but I think we are on a path back to that suppression to very low levels.”
When that is achieved, she said the challenge will be to keep coronavirus levels low, adding: “We have got to do better when we get it to those low levels.”
The latest daily statistics showed there were 685 new positive cases recorded in the preceding 24 hours, which was 3.8% of all tests carried out.
The First Minister said while it was only one day’s figure, it was “further reason to be hopeful”.
Of the new cases, 158 were in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 120 were in Lothian and 100 were in Lanarkshire.
The total number of positive cases in Scotland since the pandemic started now stands at 194,954.
There were 1261 people were in hospital, down by 56, and 95 patients were in intensive care, down by four.
The number of people in hospital was below the peak of last Spring.
There were another 57 deaths registered of someone who tested positive for coronavirus in the past 28 days.
The danger is as we start to look at next winter again