‘Pay people to stay at home and isolate’

MASS testing is needed and people should be paid to isolate to curb soaring Covid cases, a leading Scottish Government adviser has said.

Professor Devi Sridhar, chairman of global public health at Edinburgh University, yesterday warned that Scotland was in a ‘race to get people vaccinated before they get infected’ with the new variant.

Schools should not reopen until the end of the month to prevent ‘adding fuel to the fire’.

Professor Sridhar, an adviser to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, told Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘All the evidence I have seen convinces me that this new variant is at least 50 to 70 per cent more transmissible. The measures to suppress it are going to become even harsher in the next few weeks if we don’t want the NHS overwhelmed.

‘Three things need to be done. Firstly, we need to vaccinate as quickly as possible as many people as possible.

‘This is really a race to get as many people vaccinated before they get infected.

‘The second is working on our mass testing and managed isolation. With these numbers, even tracing doesn’t really make sense. But you can do mass testing – and those that test positive, try to support them by paying them to stay home and offering support to make sure they isolate and break those chains and slow it.

‘Thirdly, we do need to delay [the return of schools] by two or three weeks to assess the evidence around this.’

When asked if she would like to see the Level system of restrictions scrapped and replaced with a nationwide lockdown, Professor Sridhar said: ‘We need simple messages.

‘With the numbers we are seeing, we are heading there anyway, so we might as well do it now rather than next week.’