Wales' firebreak was declared a success - but restrictions were lifted too quickly

Cases were already falling prior to 11 local authority areas being plunged into semi-lockdown, but the complete closure of all leisure, hospitality and retail premises has accelerated this decline.

Many areas of Scotland are still 'in the red' with a cumulative seven-day case rate in excess of 100 cases per 100,000

Nationally, average daily cases fell by 33% in the first 17 days after Level 4 curbs came into effect on November 20, compared to 11% in the 17 days prior.

In Glasgow - Scotland’s most populous local authority and a hotbed for the infection - cases have fallen by 40% under the toughened restrictions, compared to 26% in the 17 days beforehand.

The city’s current Covid rates are now roughly the same as they were in mid-September, just before the arrival of university students back to campuses set off a surge virus transmission.

As of today, Glasgow residents have been banned from household visiting for a full 100 days, longer than anywhere else in the country.

READ MORE: Sturgeon advises against summer holiday bookings as report shows Scotland's second wave 'imported from Europe'

The good news is that current modelling by scientific advisors for the Scottish Government does not predict that any health board area will run out of Covid beds by the end of the month, or even early January.

An evidence paper published on Tuesday forecasts that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will be using 30 of its 76 Covid intensive care beds as of January 11.

NHS Lanarkshire is forecast to see the highest demand, with just over half its general and ICU Covid capacity expected to be filled by January 11.

There are are couple of important caveats, however.

One is that the figures include surge capacity as opposed to the normal number of staffed beds in a non-pandemic year, so staffing resources can still be stretched thin even if - on paper - units look to be ‘half empty’.

READ MORE: Chinese New Year kicked off the pandemic and Thanksgiving is accelerating it - will we learn by Christmas?

Secondly, the projections - drawn up on December 2 - “exclude any effect from the festive period”.

Given the expected spike in Covid cases many epidemiologists and public health experts have forecast as a result of Christmas household mixing, these predictions are probably on the optimistic side.

On Tuesday, Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert advising the White House, warned that the US was only beginning to experience the fallout from Thanksgiving as the country neared a new record of 200,000 cases per day.

“We’re getting those staggering numbers of new cases and hospitalisations before we even feel the full brunt of the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Dr Fauci.

He added that mid-January “could be a really dark time for us” as the consequences of Christmas and Hanukkah gatherings are piled on top.

READ MORE: How did we end up back in lockdown? Just follow the numbers

From tomorrow, half the council areas in Scotland will move down a tier - to Levels 3 or 2 - with two weeks left until Christmas Day.

Those which have been in Level 4 can expect to see rates continue to fall at least until Christmas, given the incubation period for the virus.

But we only need to look at Wales to see how quickly rates of Covid can erupt again after a lockdown, rapidly undoing any gains.

Its 17-day firebreak, which ended on November 9, was credited with reducing prevalence from 280 to 160 cases per 100,000. 

It was declared a success.

By December 1, however, cases had climbed back to 268 per 100,000.

Wales is now seeing three to four times the rate of new Covid cases per day compared to other parts of the UK, and there are a record 1,800 people in Welsh hospitals with confirmed or suspected coronavirus – 400 more than the previous peak in April.

The Welsh people have been “strongly advised” by its Government scientists to postpone Christmas reunions altogether.

As of Friday, the hospitality industry in Wales was banned from serving alcohol and required to close by 6pm each day.

The daily Covid case rate in Wales is higher than any of part of the UK

The speedy unravelling of the position in Wales led Tim Spector, principal investigator for the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app, to dub the firebreak model “a disaster to be avoided”.

Of course, the real issue is that if the UK had closed its borders, imposed strictly managed quarantines on travellers, and each nation had a truly efficient test, trace and isolate system, then we would not have to rely on lockdown and release cycles to try to suppress the virus.

But that aside, we have to look to what Wales did after the firebreak: hairdressers, shops and gyms were all allowed to re-open, household bubbles were re-formed, and - in a potentially crucial divergence from Scotland - people were allowed to travel wherever they wanted within Wales, while pubs and restaurants (until last Friday) were allowed to open all day and serve alcohol.

Scotland’s ban on travel between local authorities and continued hospitality curbs - especially in the major cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh - do seem harsh.

But they might save us from ending up with "catastrophic levels" like Wales.