Key Holyrood business will be held virtually until next month amid growing alarm over the spread of the Omicron covid variant.
Scottish Parliament committees will only meet in-person under “exceptional” circumstances.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is widely expected to announce new restrictions tomorrow after warning of a “tsunami” of Omicron cases.
In a letter to MSPs, Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone wrote: “We discussed additional preventative measures we could take at this time, to further limit the number of passholders onsite at Holyrood, in order to play our part in limiting transmission of the virus.”
Johnstone wrote that, until the week commencing January 17th, committee meetings will “take place virtually” and committee witnesses will participate remotely.
Parliament staff who do not need to be onsite will work from home and MSPs have been asked to enable home working for their employees.
It comes as Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said further coronavirus restrictions are now inevitable.
Patients waiting for operations could also face longer delays and postponements, as medical staff are being redeployed to help deliver booster vaccines.
Yousaf said a new target to offer boosters to all eligible adults by the end of the year will be “extremely challenging” and the Scottish Government would be asking for more help from the military to scale up the vaccination programme.
Asked about more restrictions in response to the Omicron outbreak, Yousaf told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “I think it’s inevitable that we will announce additional protective measures.”
It is the strongest indication that additional measures will be introduced, and follows comments by Scotland’s Deputy First Minister John Swinney that ministers were going to consider reimposing more restrictions, over the weekend.
To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here.
