Scottish revellers planning to travel to English cities for Hogmanay celebrations have been urged to stay at home, to avoid spreading the Omicron variant.
John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, said travelling to England to bypass the closure of all nightclubs in Scotland would be the “wrong course of action” and went against the spirit of Scottish policy.
“People are free to take those decisions, but I would discourage them from doing so,” Swinney said on BBC Breakfast on Wednesday morning. “I think it is the wrong course of action for people to take because we have a serious situation we have got to manage and we encourage everybody to play their part in addressing that.”
Swinney, the Scottish government’s Covid response minister, said the rate of spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was “alarming” and rising far faster than any previous variant. Earlier this week, Scotland reported its highest ever number of daily cases reported on Sunday, at 11,030.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is due to update the Scottish parliament later on Wednesday and may unveil further restrictions. She said the country should be braced for even more cases in the near future.
The Scottish government ordered all nightclubs to close for at least three weeks from 27 December in an effort to suppress the latest waves. At the same time, outdoor events were limited to 500 people.
The country’s main open-air Hogmanay and New Year’s Day events, including the street party and concerts organised in Edinburgh, have been cancelled. With Omicron infections surging, Scottish ministers have urged people to limit any celebrations to a maximum of three family groups.
Unlike in England, where venues are being allowed to remain open, the Welsh government has also shut down nightclubs and ordered pubs to impose 1-metre social distancing. Furious business owners in Wales fear revellers will cross the border to English venues instead. Welsh urban centres are much closer to England than Scotland’s major cities.
Swinney said he was asking for voluntary restraint, but his request echoes restrictions on travel over the Scotland-England border in July 2020 after a significant outbreak in the Dumfries area, with linked cases in Carlisle. That led to Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, ordering people not to travel further than five miles from home.
Swinney, the Scottish government’s Covid response minister, said: “People have got to make their own choices, they have got to follow the advice we put in place. We have the power in Scotland to put in place certain restrictions and we have done those on what we consider to be a proportionate and appropriate basis.”
