IT WAS HERE IN FEBRUARY
Medical chief U-turns on claim virus wasn’t here before March
SCOTS were being infected with coronavirus as far back as February – a month earlier than previously thought. Interim chief medical officer Gregor Smith yesterday finally admitted the infection was in the country earlier than had been claimed. His revelation comes a week after he told the Record there was no evidence to suggest Covid-19
BY ViVienne aitKen Health Editor was in the country before March. The infection was already being transmitted in the community at that stage.
When the earliest cases were diagnosed in March they were all said to have had links to travel abroad.
Emma Thomson, professor of infectious diseases at the MRCUniversity of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said an earlier lockdown from countries such as Italy and the quarantine of travellers from high-risk areas could have prevented escalation of the outbreak. Smith, meanwhile, declared “cutting edge” research in Scotland was under way to understand the genetics of the virus which causes Covid-19.
He said by looking at the genome sequences of the virus, scientists had been able to establish at least 112 separate introductions of Covid-19 across Scotland – mainly from Italy, Spain and Austria – which ultimately led to sustained community transmission.
Smith said: “Right back at the start of March, when we began to see cases, the majority of those cases were detecting sequencing order from importations from abroad but not all of them had a travel history, which suggests there was some form of community transmission which was under way in Scotland probably during the month of February.”
The World Health Organisation has urged countries to investigate early suspicious cases, so that the circulation of the virus can be better understood.
But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was “not sure if there are any plans under way”
to do this. She said: “The NRS (National Records of Scotland) report on numbers of deaths report on trend of deaths and none of that broader evidence I have looked at suggests there was a significant spike of deaths early on.”
Smith said while there may have been a few cases of Covid-19 in February “we would have been seeing many, many more cases coming through in March if there had been widespread community transmission”.
He added that the infection pattern connected to the controversial Nike conference in
Edinburgh in February showed three cases, other than the eight cases already known.
Thomson said studies at her lab in Glasgow had shown travel-related introductions of the virus led to “multiple clusters of sustained community transmission”.
She added: “We identified viral lineages with no link to travel as early as three days after the first detection of infection, indicating earlier introduction to Scotland and community spread before the first detected case.
“The emergence of continental Europe as the epicentre of the global Covid pandemic was a clear driver of the Scottish outbreak, with the majority of the lineages detected in this study related to European sequences.
“Cases with links to China and other countries in SouthEast Asia were comparatively not detected.
“The speed at which the virus took hold in Scotland and the UK as a whole following multiple introductions, mainly from other European countries, was extremely rapid.
“It is possible an earlier lockdown from countries with a high burden of cases, such as Italy, and measures such as quarantine of travellers from high-risk areas, might have prevented escalation of the outbreak and multiple clusters of ongoing community transmission.”
Last night, Labour’s health spokeswoman Monica Lennon said the findings added to concerns that a lack of testing had enabled cases to go undetected.
She added: “Disappointingly, the Scottish Government still hasn’t secured a programme of antibody testing which would tell people if they’ve had Covid-19.
“For grieving families who have lost loved ones, the need for answers is urgent.” Sturgeon has announced she will appoint an expert group to provide a clearer picture of the impact on ethnic minority communities of coronavirus.
She said in Scotland, unlike the rest of the UK and other countries, analysis did not appear to show ethnic minorities were “disproportionately shown to be adversely affected” by the virus.
But she added: “We are working to better understand the data so we can take the appropriate action and this group will use its expertise to challenge, inform and shape future work.”