Sturgeon confirms all schoolchildren set to make return
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ALL pupils across Scotland will be back in the classroom full-time following the Easter holidays, Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed.
Speaking at a Scottish Government coronavirus briefing yesterday, the First Minister said the decision had been taken following an assessment of relevant data.
She said: “When the Easter holidays end, virtually all pupils will return to school full-time, so secondary schools will go back to in-person, full-time learning.”
Sturgeon said the exception to this is children who are shielding, who are asked to remain at home until April 26.
Speaking about the return schools, she said: “This, I know, will be a huge relief to many children and young people and, of course, to many parents and carers, and as I said a moment ago, by the end of April we want to see children on the shielding list get back to school in person as well.”
The First Minister announced that Scotland recorded no deaths of Covid-19 patients for the fourth day running but stressed this figure tends to be artificially low over the weekends as most registry offices are closed.
She said there were 259 positive cases in the past 24 hours.
The First Minister said the coronavirus is “down...but not out” in Scotland, as she gave a further update on daily figures.
The numbers of Covid-19 patients in hospital in Scotland has fallen to 196, down 19 from Thursday when this figure was last provided due to the Easter break.
Of these patients, the number in intensive care remains the same as prior to the Easter break at 21.
The death toll under the daily measure used by the Scottish Government – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – remains at 7614. to
The daily test positivity rate 2%, down from 2.5% on Monday.
Of the 259 new cases yesterday, 93 were in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area, with 44 in NHS Lothian and 32 in NHS Lanarkshire, and the rest split over six other health boards.
The First Minister warned there is still a risk of Covid-19 spikes as are being seen in other countries, despite relatively low numbers in Scotland.
She said: “Here in Scotland we are still seeing hundreds of people every day testing positive for it and almost all of the new cases that we are seeing reported now in Scotland are of the new variant that emerged just before Christmas and as we know that variant is more infectious than the variants we were dealing with earlier this year.” is
Scenes of mass gatherings and disorder in the Meadows in Edinburgh over the weekend, following some lockdown easing, are of “considerable concern”, Sturgeon added.
Police officers should not have to disperse crowds, she said, after a video surfaced of a major fight between young people at the park.
The First Minister also gave an update on vaccines, saying the first batch of newly approved Moderna vaccines arrived in Scotland on Monday. Scotland is due to receive more than one million of the 17 million doses ordered by the UK.
She said she hopes to confirm whether further lockdown changes planned for April 26, such as opening hospitality and more retail businesses, will take place or not at a further briefing on April 20.