‘No cover-up’ over Covid
Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed claims of a “coverup” over a coronavirus outbreak at a Nike conference in Edinburgh in February.
The First Minister insisted patient confidentiality prevented her from going public about the cases.
The Scottish Government has been accused of a “cover up” over the first cases of coronavirus to emergence in Scotland.
The claims were dismissed by Nicola Sturgeon who insisted that patient confidentiality prevented her from going public about the cases at a conference staged by sportswear giant Nike in Edinburgh in February.
The cases only came to light after a BBC Disclosure documentary aired this week. The first Scottish case to be made public was a week later – a separate case in Tayside.
Ms Sturgeon insisted that the Edinburgh cases themselves were reported in the daily numbers published by the Scottish Government as soon as they were officially confirmed.
But Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs slammed the First Minister’s handling of the situation.
“It is deeply shocking that the First Minister made the decision to cover up these Covid cases in Scotland despite promises to be open and honest at the start of the outbreak,” he said.
“There was no need to publish any patient details of this outbreak so the First Minister’s defence simply isn’t good enough.
”SNP ministers reported outbreaks in Tayside and Ayrshire then why not in Lothian? This was a basic failure in Test, Trace, Isolate right at the beginning of this crisis.
“Who knows what kind of impact this failure has had on the trajectory of this crisis.”
Scots had previously been told the first case to emerge in the country was in Tayside – someone travelling back from Italy– reported on 1 March.
But an outbreak had happened in Edinburgh on 26 and 27 February at a conference in the capital for Nike. More than 70 employees from all over the world attended the conference at the Hilton Carlton Hotel.
Ministers insist they were only alerted to this situation on March 2 after being alerted by international public health authorities regarding an individual not based in the UK who had tested positive for COVID-19 following their attendance at the conference.
The following day - March 3 - saw the first confirmed Scots case of someone who had been at the Nike event. This was one of two cases reported on 4 March.
A total of eight cases of people living in Scotland were eventually linked with the Nike conference in the capital, health secretary Jeane Freeman told MSPS yesterday.
Ms Sturgeon defended her handling of the incident at the daily coronavirus briefing yesterday. “I’m satisfied then and I’m satisfied now that all appropriate steps were taken” Ms Sturgeon said.
She insisted that the Scottish Government was not aware of the outbreak while the Nike conference was taking place at the end of February.
“That is not the case,” she insisted. “The knowledge that there were cases associated with that event transpired when the cases associated with that event began to be confirmed and reported through the Scottish reporting system, the normal daily figures that are still being reported now.”
An incident management team was established by Health Protection Scotland, Ms Sturgeon added, and contract tracing was undertaken to protect public health.
“At the time I probed whether we should be putting more information into the public domain. The advice, which is advice I accepted, was that it was not appropriate.
“One of the reasons for that was patient confidentiality at a time when the number of cases remained as low as they were, to identify any case who had contracted the virus could have potentially identified the patients concerned.”
And she hit back at opposition claims that the Scottish Government had sought to “cover up” the cases.
“That is complete and utter nonsense,” she added.
“Why would have been trying to cover anything up? We were reporting figures on this. I stood up here every single day to be as open and transparent with you the public as possible.
“There is no interest in covering these things up, so that is nonsense.”
Ministers insist that all individuals who had attended the conference were “contact traced”, with close contacts of cases in Scotland also traced.
Opponents have questioned why the Scottish Government could not subsequently have made it clear that the first cases to emerge in the country had been in the Lothians in late February, even if the venue was kept vague to address the confidentiality issue.
The issue is sensitive because it relates to the first cases of the virus in the country and gives rise to the claims that Scots have been misled over how long it has been here.
Ian Murray, Labour MP for Edinburgh South, said the cases raise “major questions” for the Scottish Government.
He stated: “Why was there a cover-up following the February outbreak, despite a clear risk to public health in Edinburgh?
“Why wasn’t lockdown introduced earlier, as was happening elsewhere, when the virus was spreading in our city? Why does testing for Covid-19 remain so pitifully low in Scotland, leaving us lagging well behind the rest of the UK?”