STAYCATIONS within Scotland may still be possible this summer as coronavirus restrictions ease over the coming months, a public health expert has said.
Professor Linda Bauld of the University of Edinburgh expressed hope that domestic breaks will still be possible, despite Nicola Sturgeon yesterday urging Scots not to book holidays abroad and that travel elsewhere in Scotland in summer remained "uncertain".
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon warns Scots not to book summer holidays abroad
Prof Bauld also voiced hope that pubs and restaurants will open up again in the next few months, and “people should be hopeful that we’re not going to be stuck in this situation indefinitely”.
However, she said measures such as mask wearing and social distancing are likely to continue for some time to control the virus.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, Prof Bauld said: “I’m very hopeful that we’ll have breaks in Scotland and be able to take advantage of our fantastic hospitality and tourism industry here, and we need to support them.
"I think we’re looking forward to that."
She added: “I’m certainly already thinking about where I could go in a couple of months’ time, and I think if we continue to make progress we will be able to holiday, not abroad, I think because of quarantine unfortunately foreign travel is going to be off the cards for a while, but travelling around more domestically – absolutely.”
On the reopening of pubs and restaurants, she suggested that pubs will first reopen with access outdoors.
She said: “I’m really hopeful that they will be, I certainly think when the weather gets better we’ll be able to access that outdoors and then indoors with mitigation if we continue to make progress.
“It’s been really, really tough for that sector.
"The important thing is when we do open up, we don’t want to have to close down again and that’s why the vaccines are going to be absolutely essential."
Nonetheless, she cautioned that people will likely continue to have to wear face coverings for the rest of the year and in future winters.
“We’re going to have some public health measures, face coverings, distancing and keeping our eye on not importing variants from overseas, for some time to come.”
More than one million people in Scotland have now had their first dose of a Covid vaccine.
Prof Bauld said she expects the country will return to the levels framework of restrictions as it reopens in stages.
She said that framework is based on a range of indicators and while progress is being made, the number of people in hospital needs to go down before things can change.
She said: “ICU and hospital numbers need to go down more and also the modelling of capacity needs to be in the right place, but I really do think we’re going to be hearing good news quite soon and people should be hopeful that we’re not going to be stuck in this situation indefinitely.”
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