Visitors from England ‘made no difference to spread of virus’
TOURISTS travelling to rural parts of Scotland from elsewhere in the UK last summer did not pose a coronavirus ‘threat’.
There were no significant Covid-19 outbreaks in the Highlands and Islands linked back to holidaymakers, according to a leading expert.
This is despite claims from the Scottish Government that both UK and overseas travel led to the reseeding of Covid in Scotland.
Professor Mark Woolhouse yesterday said that while rural areas were ‘very busy’ over the summer months there were ‘no outbreaks of any significance linked to tourists’.
The comments by the University of Edinburgh expert on infectious disease will provide a welcome boost to the tourism sector, which is desperate to reopen in the coming months.
Travel across the UK and from different regions in Scotland is currently banned under tough lockdown restrictions.
On Tuesday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon failed to set out when hospitality businesses can hope to welcome back customers.
However, her advisers have said that while overseas travel is unlikely this summer, staycations should be allowed if the country continues to suppress Covid-19.
Last year, some rural communities complained of being ‘swamped’ by visitors from the wider UK.
At a meeting of Holyrood’s Covid committee, Professor Woolhouse, who advises the Scottish GovernExpert view: Mark Woolhouse ment on pandemic strategy, was questioned about planning for this summer. He told MSPs he could see no reason why tourists from across the UK should not be welcomed back to Scotland for holidays.
He said: ‘I heard a lot of voices over the last summer saying these tourists from England were a potential epidemiological threat to those regions. I didn’t think they would be, and it turned out they weren’t.
‘The Highlands and Islands were very busy last summer and there were no outbreaks of any significance linked to tourists, there was no epidemiological problem in the Highlands and Islands during the tourist season.
‘When the sequencing came in later in the year, there were a few number of lineages of virus that could be linked to England – but not necessarily tourists.
‘They were just 6 per cent of the total. This is not where Scotland’s viruses were coming from.’
Professor Woolhouse added: ‘It proved possible last summer to open up the Highlands and Islands to a significant extent without having a major problem. And now we’ve got the vaccine, it’s not clear to me why it would be more of a problem. If anything it would surely be less.’
He said: ‘Yes, we could wall off the islands, and stop tourism. But I think we have to think very carefully about the balance of the public health gain from the loss of tourism income.’
His comments contradict Miss Sturgeon after she claimed Scotland had been ‘close’ to eliminating coronavirus until it was reseeded by UK and international travel.
Professor Woolhouse yesterday said the country had never been close to eliminating the virus.
He claims that despite official figures shared by the First Minister last summer, Covid cases have
‘Not where viruses were coming from’ ‘Yes, we could wall off the islands’
never fallen below 500, according to ‘very well validated’ modelling.
He said: ‘Scotland was not close to elimination at any stage during this epidemic.’
Last June, Miss Sturgeon claimed that Scotland was ‘not far away’ from eliminating Covid-19.
She has since repeatedly insisted that this was the case, and that reimportation of the virus prevented elimination.
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Donald Cameron said: ‘Rather than trying to rewrite history about last summer, the SNP Government should listen to the evidence presented by one of their own respected scientific advisers.’
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said that in the summer ‘most of the strains of the virus that had been circulating in Scotland were extinguished, with the epidemic being reseeded with strains mainly from travel from across the UK and overseas’.