SCOTLAND’S chief medical officer has said there is “no evidence” of a wider coronavirus outbreak linked to the Nike conference which took place in Edinburgh in February.
It emerged last month that one of the 70 Nike employees to attend the conference on February 26 and 27 had the virus and infected eight delegates who lived in Scotland. The first Covid-19 case in Scotland was not made public until March 1.
Labour and Tory MPs and MSPs criticised the Scottish Government after the BBC revealed the incident, with shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray repeatedly calling the conference the “ground-zero” of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: Nike coronavirus report ‘as soon as possible’
Nicola Sturgeon has consistently dismissed any claims of a cover-up and today CMO Gregor Smith said that there is no evidence that the conference caused any wider Covid-19 outbreak.
Speaking at the daily briefing, Smith said: "This particular sub lineage of the virus has not been detected in Scotland since towards the end of March.
"This suggests that the actions taken to manage this outbreak were successful in containing spread and have led to the eradication of this particular viral lineage, with no evidence of any wider outbreak associated with it in Scotland since that time."
At today’s briefing the CMO said the virus may have been spreading in the community before the Nike conference or the first official case which was announced in March.
He explained scientists have identified at least 112 separate introductions of Covid-19 to Scotland, and cases with no clear links to travel.
Smith added scientists in Scotland are using “cutting edge” techniques to understand how the virus spread across the country since first being introduced.
They do this by identifying the molecular differences in the virus from people who have been infected, and then creating "family trees" for Covid-19 which help them to track it by time and place.
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