BORIS Johnson will today "nuance" his message on shielding over-70s from the coronavirus outbreak and detail the UK Government's approach to social gatherings after its media strategy came under fire.
The Prime Minister, after chairing another emergency Cobra meeting, will give a press conference from Downing St late this afternoon, accompanied by Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Valance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.
This is set to become a daily event with either Mr Johnson or a senior minister giving the press conference. This evening Matt Hancock, the UK Health Secretary, will give a Commons statement to update MPs.
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Over the weekend, he suggested every Briton over the age of 70 in England and Wales would be told soon to stay at home for an extended period to protect themselves from coronavirus.
When it was put to him that the suggestion was that over-70s would be asked to stay self-isolated at home for up to four months, Mr Hancock replied: "The protection of the vulnerable and elderly by asking them to stay away, to stay at home, that is in our action plan, but we do not want formally to say yet that people should do that and the reason for that is simply this length of time that they'd need to stay self-isolated, stay at home to protect themselves is a very big ask; it's a very long time.
"And we do know that if you ask people to do this sort of thing, then they can tire of it. We know that it has…real negative impacts."
However, the Scottish Government said it had no plans to isolate the elderly in such a way and would instead "ask them to reduce social contact".
Jeane Freeman, the Scottish Health Secretary, explained: "We don't want people who are elderly to be stuck in their homes alone not contacting anyone, with their families not able to be in touch with them and to help them."
However, this morning Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, qualified the earlier impression from the UK Government, saying: "It is the case people will be able to go out and walk the dog. This is about being sensible; but not mixing in crowds.
"If you look at the fatalities so far, they have all been among the older community or where people have an underlying health vulnerability. It's very important in these challenging times, that in this great national effort we all come together to protect people who are the most vulnerable in our society by preparing them for what could be an extended period at home."
Mr Shapps stressed that the Government was following the scientific advice and that it was important that the over-70s knew about the prospect of being asked to self-isolate for a long period of time so they could start preparing themselves for it.
Nicola Sturgeon later also insisted the governments in London and Edinburgh were adopting the same approach in relation to asking elderly people to reduce their social contact.
The First Minister said: "There's speculation in the media that Scotland is proposing a different approach to the over-70s than the rest of the UK; I want to be very clear that is not the case.
"The position the Cabinet Secretary and our National Clinical Director have been articulating around social distancing of these groups, not isolation of these groups, is the policy that Cobra has been discussing and will discuss later today," she added.
Asked about the suggestion of a divergence of approach between Edinburgh and London, the PM's spokesman was equally adamant that this did not exist. "It's important you wait to hear the steps which the UK Government is proposing and, secondly, it's obviously not for me to speak for the Scottish Government but they have set out themselves this morning that they did not believe what you suggest is in fact the case."
A Government source later made clear Mr Johnson would set out a more "nuanced" approach to shielding the elderly from the coronavirus at today's press conference.
Last week, Ms Sturgeon announced the Scottish Government would be recommending no social gatherings of more than 500 people should take place in Scotland. This was not because she disagreed with the general scientific advice that such a move would have a minor effect on transmission but, rather, to enable the emergencies services to concentrate on helping those with the infection.
While Mr Johnson was sympathetic to the FM's resilience argument, he made clear this was not something the UK Government was considering for south of the border in the short term but it might be something it did later on. However, within 24 hours Whitehall sources were suggesting that this option was now something that UK ministers were considering introducing earlier than planned; they denied it was a U-turn.
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Yesterday, Ms Freeman appeared to be critical of the way Whitehall was handling the media strategy, telling the BBC's Politics Scotland programme: "Overnight briefing, background briefing, unattributed sources is not the way to ensure the public are understanding[of] what we are trying to do and are working with us to do that."
She pointed out how Edinburgh was approaching the crisis was for Ms Sturgeon to give a press conference, for her to brief MSPs, and for "clinical voices" to explain the approach, so that the public could fully understand the recommended actions and follow them.
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