Isolation ‘crucial’ in stopping spread

Jason Leitch has said it is “astonishing” the Coupar Angus Covid outbreak has not spread further, saying the willingness of workers to self-isolate has been crucial to controlling the virus.

The national clinical director admitted he had been worried by the outbreak, as he joined Nicola Sturgeon to praise the 2 Sisters factory workforce and their families for following the rules as a further 11 cases were reported.

At her daily coronavirus briefing, the first minister said there must be “very high compliance” among staff at the chicken factory, adding it was “very encouraging” that there was no community transmission at this stage.

All workers and their families should continue selfisolating until Monday and if the incident management team (IMT) believed further action was required beyond that then fresh advice would be issued.

Prof Leitch said: “This outbreak in NHS Tayside worried us but it has been astonishing to keep it as controlled as it has been. The incident management team, the contact tracing team and the behaviour of the workers has been crucial in that control.

“But that doesn’t mean that if you have hundreds of people with the virus, some won’t get sick.”

During her briefing, Ms Sturgeon revealed there had been no new Scottish Covid deaths reported in the last 24 hours. In total 20,107 people have tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up by 51 from 20,056 the day before.

Ten of those new cases were in Tayside, two were in Grampian, 14 were in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and three were in Lanarkshire.

Across the country, there were 255 people in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, a decrease of two in 24 hours. Of these patients, three were in intensive care, up by one.

As far as the 2 Sisters outbreak was concerned, Ms Sturgeon said there were now 177 positive cases in the cluster. Of those, 157 were workers at the chicken factory and 20 were contacts of them.