SCOTLAND’S First Minister will provide an update on the country’s coronavirus situation this afternoon after the national clinical director noted that the case rate is “falling dramatically”.
Nicola Sturgeon will speak at a briefing alongside Jason Leitch – the conference will be shown on the Scottish Government’s media channels and broadcast live on The National’s Facebook page. It is not yet known if it will be shown on the BBC Scotland channel.
Sturgeon will likely discuss the vaccination programme after opposition politicians accused her government of failing to meet a key target.
She said it was a “fact” that the Government did not miss a vaccination target, insisting the target was to offer first doses, rather than provide them, to all 40-49-year-olds by yesterday. So far only 75.8% of those in that group are fully covered against Covid-19.
The First Minister called on politicians to deal in “facts and not in childish politics”. Health Secretary Humza Yousaf also accused opposition politicians of “mischief” amid the row.
Journalists are likely to put questions to the First Minister on the vaccination programme and ongoing row over the target.
Meanwhile, Yousaf said yesterday that he is “confident” Scotland can move forward and ease Covid-19 restrictions further on August 9.
This August 9 date is also likely to be discussed at the briefing, although Sturgeon is not set to make a final decision on this until August 3 when she will update the Scottish Parliament.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme this morning, the national clinical director sounded optimistic.
“We had five out of the top 10 local authorities in the UK, now we have none in the top 150,” he told listeners.
“We’ve now seen hospitalisations fall. Around 3% of positive people get admitted to hospital but they are now younger, relatively healthy and discharged quicker. But some stay, and we’ve had many deaths over the last few days.”
READ MORE: Scotland's Covid-19 case rate is 'dramatically falling', says Jason Leitch
He said the participation of fans in Euro 2020 had caused a spike in cases, but said it was “important to keep the football in perspective”.
“The Scotland-England game gave us a spike because of travel, not necessarily Wembley. Unfortunately, from a sporting perspective, Scotland went out far too early. But epidemiologically speaking, that probably did us some favours,” he said.
“We tested a lot of these fans and for a short time (cases) went from 1:1 male-female to 9:1 male-female. It has now returned to 1:1.”
Watch the First Minister’s briefing at 2pm on The National’s Facebook page.
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