A key adviser to Nicola Sturgeon said Scotland has to take a cautious approach to easing lockdown despite progress with vaccines.
Professor Devi Sridhar’s comments come as pupils in P1-3 prepare to go to class tomorrow in the first significant lifting of curbs since the winter clampdown.
The Scottish Government is this week preparing its route map out of lockdown, and calls are growing for a speedy return to “normal” as more people get vaccinated.
Prof Sridhar, on Sky News, said vaccines are helping with death rates but moving too quickly could still put too much pressure on hospitals.
Sridhar said: “What gets us with this virus is the hospitalisation rate and how many people are susceptible.
“Hospitalisations do go down to people in their 30s and 40s which means that is what we’re going after. Of course the deaths, but also the hospitals being full and not being able to provide routine care for all the things we need the NHS for.”
She said Israel found under-60s were being hospitalised once they’d vaccinated the over 60s group.
However, the vaccination programme is having an “astonishing” effect on the disease, the public health expert said.
On schools, she said the Scottish Government’s phased approach is better than the UK Government’s plan to allow children back in one go next March.
“We’re learning from Denmark who are ahead of us by several weeks and also have the new variant,” she said.
“The new variant is creating uncertainty which means we have to go more cautiously. There is a huge risk from bringing all kids back at the same time and then having to shut schools again. We’re trying here to move slowly, to move cautiously, to get as many kids back as is possible but in a slow, staged way.”
The First Minister will publish the Scottish Government’s route map out of lockdown in the week ahead.
Scottish Conservatives published their own set of demands for the plan on Friday. They want to see “trigger points” where rules can be lifted linked to progress with vaccines.
UK Government minister Matt Hancock today said the Prime Minister must also take a “cautious” approach to easing lockdown restrictions. Schools in England are expected to open to all pupils on March 8.
Hancock said there were still almost 20,000 people in hospital with Covid-19 and that – despite the jabs rollout going “very well” – time must be taken to “get this right”.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney repeated his call to parents to follow strict social distancing rules at the school gates on Monday.
He told the BBC’s Sunday Show programme: “I know this can be quite controversial at times but adults making sure they follow all of the physical distancing requirements at the school gate, or the mask-wearing requirements, is critical to make sure that the return of young children – who are much less susceptible to transmitting the virus – is not in some way undermined by the fact that there is essentially parental transmission.”
He continued: “We’ve all got to play a part, not just the school environment but the whole surrounding environment of society, to make sure that we do all that we can to suppress the virus."
Swinney said government ministers will monitor data before deciding whether more children can go back to class.
