SCOTLAND’S national clinical director has warned that “serious decisions” will need to be taken on both domestic and international travel once the prevalence of the virus is suppressed to avoid igniting a fourth wave of the pandemic.
Professor Jason Leitch issued the warning as Health Secretary Jeane Freeman urged Scots not to flout travel restrictions.
A top doctor has admitted that one of the mutated strains thought to originate from Brazil has now been detected in the UK.
A travel ban from all South American countries, as well as Portugal, Panama and Cape Verde has been rolled out by the UK Government and was in place from 4am today.
READ MORE: Covid: Brazilian coronavirus variant detected in UK as travel ban hits
Ms Freeman said the measure was a “direct response to the new variant of the virus”.
The ban does not apply to UK and Irish nationals or EU nationals with UK settled status. But Ms Freeman said anyone travelling back from the locations “will have to self-isolate for 10 days”.
She added: “That applies to anyone in their household as well, without exception.”
At the Scottish Government’s daily coronavirus briefing, the Health Secretary was asked whether a tougher stance on travel bans should have been taken to prevent mutuated strains entering Scotland.
She said the Scottish Government is “trying to find the right balance” between essential public health measures and “the impact of those restrictions on individuals on their everyday life, their relationships and the quality of their life”.
She added: “That is never an easy balance to strike. We’ve always tried to do it on the basis, as far as we can, on a four-nation approach.
“We recognise the value of that but retaining, as our colleagues have done in England, in Wales and in Northern Ireland, the right to make the decisions that we think are appropriate for the circumstances that we believe Scotland to be in.”
READ MORE: Jeane Freeman accused of potentially breaking ministerial code
But Professor Letich warned that while Scotland and the wider UK is currently in danger of spreading the virus to other parts of the world with low prevalence of Covid-19, particularly the new strain originating from Britain, he suggested that long-term travel restrictions will be needed.
He said: “The problem with travel just now is that the UK is exporting virus – not importing virus.
“The public health principle here is don’t take virus from high prevalence areas to low – other countries are banning our travel, not the other way around.
“When and if we get this prevalence down, we will have to take very serious decisions around international and national travel – that might be between the islands and Scotland, it might be between Wales and Scotland – it might be internationally.
“We have to have an importation policy. The WHO (World Health Organization) has said since the beginning of this pandemic, one of the things you require to manage this pandemic is something top stop importation of the virus.
“If we needed to learn that lesson again, we just need to look at our own history of June, July, August and September where we re-imported the virus and we got where we are today. That will have to be considered.“
Professor Leitch added that clinical experts from all four UK nations are “completely aligned in our advice on high prevalence – low prevalence travel” but stressed decisions were for politicians to make.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel