Lothians at risk of tighter lockdown

EDINBURGH and the Lothians are at risk of being hit with fresh lockdown restrictions as coronavirus cases soar.

The latest data published yesterday showed a further 53 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the Lothian health board area.

It was the third-highest number of any Scottish health board area, behind 101 cases in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and 59 in Lanarkshire, where people have already been told not to visit other households as part of tightened restrictions.

The total number of cases in the Lothians has soared by 184 over the past week.

Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday that during a review on Monday officials had ruled extra restrictions were not yet needed.

She said: ‘We are monitoring the case numbers in Lothian very closely. The national incident management team that met yesterday, that ultimately made the recommendation to continue the restrictions in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde areas, looked closely at Lothian and decided not to recommend any additional restrictions – but that remains under review.

‘One of the reasons for that decision not to recommend additional restrictions at this stage was that, unlike in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and in Lanarkshire, there wasn’t a sense that there was a particular driver that necessitated particular restrictions at this stage.

‘But as with every aspect of Covid, this is a changing situation so we will monitor it.’

She said it was not ‘inevitable’ that extra measures would be brought in but admitted ‘things may come to pass’.

Miss Sturgeon urged people to abide by her limit on gatherings of a maximum of six people from two households, so ‘we can hopefully avoid any stricter restrictions in Lothian’. Jason Leitch, the Scottish Government’s national clinical director, said Lothian is ‘next on the league table’ but there is ‘no theme coming through from Test and Protect that tells us to do anything more than what we’ve done across the whole country’. He said: ‘It is not necessarily that it comes in a wave across the Central Belt... It is not inevitable.’

Last night, NHS Lothian confirmed it had been carrying out contact tracing at Knox Academy and Preston Lodge High School, both in East Lothian.

The health board said contact tracing at Knox Academy was complete and there was no evidence of transmission within the school itself while contact tracing for the other school was continuing.

Enhanced cleaning measures are already in place in schools.

NHS Lothian also reported a cluster of cases connected to the Foresters bar in Pathhead, Midlothian, and a number of cases at Drylaw police station in Edinburgh. An appeal has been made to anyone who was in the bar on September 5 to self-isolate for a fortnight.

‘Next on the league table’