Now Mike Russell tells Scots to prepare for a ‘digital Hogmanay’
Weeks after National Clinical Director Jason Le itch urged Scots to “prepare for a digital Christmas”, Mike Russell has said it will be “digital Hogmanay”.
Scotland’ s Cabinet Sec retar y made the comment at Holyrood’s Covid-19 committee meeting yesterday, while discussing plans for the fiveday relaxation period of lockdown rules which are happening over Christmas.
Asked if a similar relaxation period could be applied for New Year, Mr Russell said: “The Christmas relaxation is what has been planned –and there’ s a lot of work gone into it. It is not possible to do that twice, as clearly the risk of doing that twice
doubles the potential for difficulty.
“S o this will not be a normal Hogmanay,” he added. “It will be, as you might call it, ‘the digital Hogmanay’. The levels applying then will be the levels that determine what you can and can’t do.”
In October, Mr Le itch had said S cots should “get their digital Christmas ready” as he warned that this year’s festive season is “not going to be normal” amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a radio interview, he was asked for his prognosis for the festive season.
“Christmas is not going to be normal,” he said. “There's actually no question about that.”
He told BBC Radio Scotland’ s Good Morning Scotland :“We are not going to be in large groupings with multiple families coming round – that is fiction for this year. But I’m hopeful that if we can get the numbers down to a certain level, we may be able to get some form of normality. People should get their digital Christmas ready.”