Warning over climate change event plans
ALEADING public health expert has said “it would be unwise” for an international conference on climate change to take place in Glasgow later this year.
Professor Linda Bauld made clear her view after the National Clinical Director Jason Leitch earlier this week cautioned against overseas travel for the duration of the year.
Leitch warned people could travel to a country where vaccination programmes were not advanced and risk importing the virus back to Scotland.
The United Nations’ COP26 event was due to take place in Scotland last November, but was postponed to early November this year as a result of the pandemic.
At the time of the decision to postpone the event it was thought the crisis would be resolved within 12 months.
However, with more infectious strains of the virus emerging health experts are now concerned that the pandemic may last longer.
Asked for her views on whether COP26 should be postponed or whether moves made to severely limit the numbers attending, Bauld said she thought delivering the conference “unwise”.
“To deliver a large conference at a time when it is possible that people in Scotland may still be living with travel restrictions seems to me to be unwise,” Ms Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University said.
“Even if travel has opened up more, quarantine policies will need to be followed including self-isolation for a period even if testing for travellers is more developed than is currently the case.
“If delegates don’t factor that into their visit and if facilities are not provided then there is a real risk of importing cases which could undermine progress we will have hopefully made by then in addressing the pandemic in Scotland.”
At the Scottish Government’s daily briefing on the pandemic, the First Minister yesterday said there was no guarantee life will be “back to normal” by the summer, the First Minister said when asked whether music festivals should go ahead this year.
Nicola Sturgeon said some coronavirus restrictions will have to remain in place even if the vaccination programme is able to suppress transmission rates, and that is a consideration which currently makes it impossible to say when large events will be permitted.
The Glastonbury Festival has this week been cancelled for a second year due to the pandemic, but organisers of the TRNSMT festival – due to take place in Glasgow Green in July – still hope it can go ahead if restrictions are lifted in time. At the briefing the First Minister said she has “huge sympathy” for organisations debating whether they can hold events in the summer.
Referring to the vaccination programme, she continued: “We are still very much in the grip of a global pandemic and none of these things, in and of themselves, are going to necessarily create a completely back to normal environment in any walk of life. So I think organisations have to be aware of that.”
A UK Government spokesman said: “We are closely monitoring the Covid situation in the run-up to the event. The COP26 team is working hard on exploring all the options around holding a successful, inclusive summit which is held safely.”