SNP ‘covered up’ Nike conference Covid outbreak, opponents claim

A COVID outbreak at a major business conference was ‘covered up’ by the SNP, it was claimed yesterday.

A total of 39 cases were traced to a Nike conference in Edinburgh held between February 25 and 27 last year.

The outbreak was not disclosed by the Scottish Government initially due to patient confidentiality concerns, but the details were later revealed in a BBC Scotland documentary.

Last night, opponents claimed the First Minister had tried to ‘cover up’ the infections. Twenty-three cases were among people who attended or were directly linked to the conference and 16 were close contacts. Eight of those infected were resident in Scotland.

A long-awaited incident management team (IMT) report into the handling of the outbreak was published by Public

Health Scotland (PHS) yesterday. It admitted some asymptomatic infections caused by the outbreak may have been missed due to testing policy at the time, however, gene sequencing showed there was no onward transmission.

There has also been criticism of the fact PHS has made no recommendations about how to improve its response to Covid outbreaks after the incident.

Officials said no ‘hot debrief’, a key component of the immediate response to public health incidents, took place.

The failure to undertake this meant no formal recommendations were made to ministers or councils about how to improve the handling of Covid outbreaks based on lessons learned. PHS guidance states a ‘hot debrief’ is necessary after any health incident which is considered to have a local or national impact.

Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray, said: ‘Nicola Sturgeon tried to cover up the outbreak.

‘The SNP First Minister has consistently claimed the Government did all it could to respond to the outbreak, but we now know for a fact that isn’t true.

‘This is yet more evidence of the SNP’s culture of secrecy... the people of Edinburgh and all those impacted by this cover-up deserve a direct apology.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘As PHS have made clear, the process of drafting the IMT report has been complex and lengthy... learning around Covid-19 is a continuous process and findings such as this report will inform the wider response to the pandemic.’