Omicron threat may be limited, says Sturgeon

Day after urging PM to quarantine all arrivals, First Minister ‘is more positive’ about situation

NICOLA STURGEON has predicted the threat from the omicron variant may “diminish rather than increase” after disclosing all the cases discovered in Scotland are linked to one event.

Only one day after she demanded Boris Johnson impose eight days of quarantine on all arrivals to Britain, the First Minister said all cases north of the border – which have risen from six to nine – were connected to a “single private event” on Nov 20.

She said “we fully expect” more cases to emerge that were linked to the gathering. The nine people identified so far were tested on or around Nov 23 and have been self-isolating at home.

In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, Ms Sturgeon said there was no link between the cases and any foreign travel, suggesting “there is community transmission of omicron in Scotland”.

She added, however, that the fact that all the cases were linked to one event suggested “this may still be limited” and none had required hospital treatment.

Ms Sturgeon also said that there was nothing in a review of this month’s positive PCR tests conducted by Public Health Scotland (PHS) to suggest that omicron was “sustained or widespread”.

She told MSPS that possible links between the nine cases and the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow were being investigated, but the timing meant it was “improbable”. The conference ran from Oct 31 to Nov 13.

Her statement came a day after she and Mark Drakeford, her Welsh counterpart, wrote a joint letter to the Prime Minister urging him to force all international arrivals to isolate for eight days and take two PCR tests.

As more evidence about the variant’s transmissibility and vaccine resistance emerges, Ms Sturgeon told MSPS that she hoped “our level of concern will diminish rather than increase” but argued it was “prudent” to plan for a worse outcome.

She then admitted she was “more positive than I was a few weeks ago” about the situation in Scotland, even taking account of the new variant.

In the past week the average number of daily cases has fallen by 15 per cent, with a drop fall of 27 per cent among the over-60s thanks to the booster programme. The number in intensive care with Covid has also fallen.

PHS examined samples dating from Nov 1 to identify any with an “S gene dropout”, which the delta variant does not have. Five cases were found in the Lanarkshire area and four in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Ms Sturgeon told MSPS she considered it “highly likely – indeed almost certain – that more cases, perhaps many more cases, will emerge”.

She also disclosed that “urgent modelling work” was under way on how to expand Scotland’s booster rollout programme, with more than a million extra Scots now eligible for another jab.

However, unlike Mr Johnson, she provided no deadline for this to be completed or any indication of how the expansion would be achieved.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, said: “When two million Scots are waiting for a Covid jab, it’s difficult to understand why the Government is not doing everything possible to boost the rollout by backing our call for mass vaccination centres to be reopened.”

‘When two million Scots are waiting for a Covid jab, it’s difficult to understand why the Government is not doing everything to boost the rollout’