Scotland is heading into third wave of Covid pandemic, Jason Leitch warns

It came after Nicola Sturgeon said parts of the country would remain in level 2, with Glasgow moving down one from level 3. The exceptions will see much of the north and south of the country ease into level 1 curbs.

Jason Leitch warned the Indian – or Delta – variant “is causing us some challenge and is spreading quicker than we hoped”.

When asked by BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime if the country was at the start of a third wave he replied: “Yes, I think we are. The question is how big that third wave is – everybody, every modelling higher education institution ... they all said, if you open you will get more cases.

“Now I’m not sure I needed a university to tell me that, I think people in the street would have told me that.

“The question is, whether you control that to a level that doesn’t cause enough severe disease to fill hospitals, and enough severe disease to cause misery and death to families.

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“That’s the balance we’re now trying to strike and the advice we’ve given and the decisions the First Minister and the Cabinet have made today.”

Earlier in the day, Sturgeon hit back after Douglas Ross claimed the Scottish Government is using a one-size-fits-all approach to restriction levels.

The First Minister was answering questions in Holyrood after announcing that Glasgow will move down to level 2 on Saturday and confirming changes for the rest of the country. 

The Scottish Tory leader was first up after the announcement and said that it was a “disappointing setback” that some areas will be kept in level 2 and that while half the country will move forward, the rest remain “stuck in limbo”. 

Ross added: “The First Minister herself said in her statement, 72% of adults in Scotland have now had the first dose of the vaccine and 46% of adults in Scotland are now protected with both doses of the vaccine. 

“The First Minister also said today that we don’t need to apply a one-size-fits-all approach, but it seems that’s exactly what’s happening. Keeping whole cities or councils in level 2 is not targeted, it’s not a local approach.

“So let me ask the First Minister, will she consider moving to an approach of targeted interventions instead of council-wide restrictions?”

The First Minister hit back at Ross’s suggestion. She said: “I don’t pretend the decisions that I or the Government have taken have been perfect, far from it, but every time we have erred on the side of caution. I think time has told that that was the correct or necessary thing to have done and it’s important that we do now. 

“We’re not taking a one-size-fits-all, if we were taking a pure public health approach to this and indeed there will be some public health voices who might prefer that this is what we are doing today, we would simply have held the whole of the country in the levels they are at right now.”

Ross also asked the First Minister to provide “evidence” that the NHS was supposedly under threat of imminent severe pressure.

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Sturgeon said: “I did not say the health service was at imminent risk of severe pressure. What I said was, and again this was based on public health advice, is if we don’t act with caution, it is possible that from that unvaccinated or rather not fully vaccinated pool we would still start to see hospital numbers go up.

“The other key point I made is that while earlier this year the NHS coped with 2000 Covid patients at peak, we don’t want to get back to anything like that because that means the health service literally can’t do anything else. We’re trying to get the health service back to normal.”

It comes as scientists have warned a third wave is imminent due to the rise in cases of the Delta variant.

Professor Ravi Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, said although new cases were “relatively low” the Delta variant had fuelled “exponential growth”.