THE extra coronavirus restrictions covering 3.4m Scots are set to be extended by another week ahead of a new tiered system starting Scotland-wide in November. 

Nicola Sturgeon said the new multi-level system would apply from November 2, and she hoped nowhere would have to endure worse than the central belt at present.

The region had tougher curbs on hospitality and social mixing introduced at 6pm on October 9, a measure that was supposed to expire at 6am on October 26.

In the Greater Glasgow & Clyde, Lanarkshire, Forth Valley, Lothian and Ayrshire & Arran health board areas, pubs and restaurants have been ordered to close, while those in the rest of Scotland outside can only serve alcohol outdoors.

READ MORE: Coronavirus in Scotland: 15 new deaths and 1,456 new cases in 24 hours

However at the daily Covid briefing, Ms Sturgeon said her cabinet would discuss tomorrow whether to roll over the central belt rules for another week until the new system took effect.

She said the final decision had yet to be taken but acknowledged it would “make sense” from a public health perspective to extend the current rules in the central belt.

England brought in a three-tiered system last week to tackle the spread of the virus, while Ireland is bringing in a five-tiered system from tomorrow.

READ MORE: Major Scottish property funds to resume trading after Covid hiatus

Scotland already has an effective two-tier system, with the toughest restrictions in the five health boards across the central belt, which affect 3.4m of Scotland’s 5.4m population.

The First Minister set out the timeline for the decisions as she announced 15 coronavirus deaths and 1,456 positive cases recorded in Scotland in the past 24 hours.

She said the new tiered framework, if approved by MSPs next week, will come into effect a week on Monday, aligning with the UK Government’s new furlough scheme.

She said: “Over the course of next week we will be assessing the up-to-date data and assessing whether all of the country would go into a certain level of the new framework or whether parts of the country would go into one level and other parts of the country into another.

“As part of that we will be considering, of course, whether there are parts of the country that need tougher restrictions than those in place in the central belt right now, or whether there are parts of the country that might be able to have less tough restrictions.

“We need to assess that on the basis of the up-to-date data.”

The First Minister said she hopes a “reasonable degree of cross-party consensus” will be reached before the framework is debated.

She went on: “The other issue that falls to be decided a bit more quickly is the current restrictions, whether they will continue to apply between now and that new framework coming into place.

“By those I mean restrictions on hospitality that were put in place about 10 days ago, and whether we will roll them forward for that intervening period.

“Cabinet will discuss and decide that tomorrow morning, and all being well I will update you on our decision at 12.15 tomorrow.”

Discussing the current restrictions on hospitality and mixing introduced on October 9, she said: “What we introduced 10 days ago was pretty substantial in terms of shutting down hospitality pretty much completely in the central belt, and heavily restricting it elsewhere in the country.

“If you cast your mind back, that was not something people just shrugged their shoulders [about] and accepted.

There was a lot of angst and controversy understandably in particular within the hospitality sector. 

“We have very, very significant restrictions in place across the country, nationwide, and we were the first part of the country to do this.

“We’ere asking people to stay out of each other’s houses, and across a significant chunk of the country, hospitality is pretty much closed. That is pretty substantial.

“Is it as far we will have to go, particularly in the central belt? Right now I cannot say that categorically.

"I hope it is as far as we will have to go, but we will be considering the data into next week as we go into the levels approach and making judgments and decisions on the basis of that.

"But I wouldn’t want anybody to really underplay just how significant the restrictions we have in place are, but if we need to go further in the interests of protecting life, we will do that.

"We will try to mitigate the impact of that, because everything has an impact on other parts of life, as far as we possible can.”

Asked if the common sense option was to roll-over the tough Central Belt restrictions rather than zigzag between systems, she said: "If you look at the numbers across the Central Belt right now, if you look at the sequencing over the next week of moving to a new system, you might expect that it would make sense, not just from the sequencing point-of-view, but from a public health point-of-view, to see that rolled over.

"That is one option the cabinet will be looking at tomorrow.

"The regulations currently expire on Monday, so there will be other options for that to be allowed to happen. We will look at the data, and I will give the outcome tomorrow.”

Ms Sturgeon suggested government would make the final decisions on which tiers applied to which parts of the country, rather than Holyrood or councils, and said she wanted to avoid a repeat of the London-Manchester tussle this week over Tier 3 rules and compensation.

Asked whether MSPs would know before on the tier system how it would initially apply in their area, she said Holyrood should decide the overall "framework", not the detail.

She said: “Given the speed at which governments have to act, I think for parliament to be taking decisions on which parts  of the country going into which levels, as opposed to deciding the overall framework and there then to be a process of consultation about the application of that framework, I think that’s probably what we will aim to do.

“Once we have an initial application of this framework it will be something that is reviewed on a weekly basis, like the international quarantine situation is just now, where we decide whether countries are coming in and out of quarantine, we would have the same situation for keeping the application of tiers under review.

“So I think it’s rally important parliament endorses the overall framework and the process government will then go through to apply that process, as opposed to necessarily getting into the individual decision. That is something I think Government has to have the flexibility to decide.”

Asked if councils could negotiate the terms of their tier, as in England, and have local variations on which facilities opened and closed, Ms Sturgeon said: “We’re trying to get greater certainty but not deprive ourselves of all flexibility, because in the face of an infectious virus that wouldn’t be sensible to do.

“We want to minimise the scenario where two areas could in the same tier but have different levels of restriction, because that takes away from that level of certainty and predicability.

“But it’s probably not sensible to rule that out completely.”

Asked if councils could negotiate the terms of their tier, Ms Sturgeon made it clear decision making would be centralised, saying it was not fair to “offload” touch choices to councils.

She said: “It will be driving ambition to avoid getting into the kind of situation we’ve seen playing out in Manchester at the moment. I don’t mean that as a criticism of anybody in that situation. These are tough decisions. I think it’s really important that the buck for these difficult decisions stops here with me and the government. We’re asking people to do extraordinary things right now and it’s not fair for me and the government to try and offload those decisions on other people, whether that’s local authorities or health boards.

“But we have to consult and be as collaborative as possible. We will absolutely be engaging with local authorities. As we take decisions about which levels apply in which parts of the country we will want that to be collaborative.

“There may be circumstances where a local authority is coming to us and saying put our area up a level because we’re really worried about what’s happening here. But ultimately we have to be able to take the decisions.

“We’re not in a position to get into stand-offs over money. We will put forward in our strategic framework a system of support for businesses that are being required at any time to close, or restricted, but we have finite resources.” 

Asked if councils could have hyper local variations on which facilities were open and closed, Ms Sturgeon said: “We’re trying to get greater certainty but not deprive ourselves of all flexibility, because in the face of an infectious virus that wouldn’t be sensible to do.

“We want to minimise the scenario where two areas could in the same tier but have different levels of restriction, because that takes away from that level of certainty and predicability.

“But it’s probably not sensible to rule that out completely.”