CORONAVIRUS in some parts of Scotland remains “stubbornly high”, despite level 3 restrictions, John Swinney has warned.
He hinted that ministers were set to place parts of the country into a level 4 lockdown on Tuesday in a bid to "suppress the virus and give us as much control as we possibly can do before we go into the more acute period of winter”.
There are concerns in particular over the west coast.
Cases in Glasgow were up by 7% last week. West Dunbartonshire was up 6%, while East Dunbartonshire saw a rise of 4%.
In East Renfrewshire cases jumped by 13%.
Being placed in Level 4 would mean that gyms, hospitality and non-essential shops would all need to close. The Scottish Government can, if necessary, also issue a stay at home order.
While the deputy first minister said that placing these council areas into the strictest set of restrictions was “not inevitable”, he made clear that the government needed to do more to “suppress the virus and give us as much control as we possibly can” ahead of winter.
Swinney said: “The government has been anxious to avoid putting local authorities into level 4 restrictions because obviously we're conscious of the multiple issues that will raise for individual local authority areas, but we are seeing the levels of the virus being stubbornly high in some areas but the level 3 restrictions are not really bringing them down by the type of levels that we would like to see.”
He said there was “still too much human interaction going on, which is enabling, despite the restrictions that are in place, the virus to spread from individual to individual.”
Swinney added: “There's very little evidence of virus spreading within schools, there are some cases but it's very low, and as we know young people are unlikely to be spreaders of the violence to any significant extent, but it is within shopping, within hospitality, within the general movement of individuals, within society, and I suspect probably also within household visiting which - although we've made it very clear that household visiting should not be taking place - the public information that we have and the information from public attitudes we have indicates that people are still doing this.”
Swinney said the government was trying to get ahead of “the rising trend in the virus”.
He said: “That's why it's important that we look again before the decisions that are made on Tuesday on what's the appropriate level to be in place to make sure that we can suppress the virus and give us as much control as we possibly can do before we go into the more acute period of winter.”
“Our guidance has been crystal clear about the necessity of wearing face coverings about washing hands, cleaning surfaces about observing the physical distancing rules, and then also very clear guidance about the fact that we shouldn't be visiting other people's houses.
"We will continue to reinforce these messages.
"We are seeing in different parts of the country substantial progress being made in reducing the prevalence of the virus, but we need to do more because we've got to be mindful of a range of other factors like the capacity within our health service, which has got to be there when we get into the more challenging period of deep midwinter in January and February, we've got to make sure we've got adequate health service capacity."
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