SCOTS have been urged to "minimise" socialising in the run up to Christmas with a maximum of three households mixing at once.

The advice applies to gatherings in homes as well as indoor public settings such as bars and restaurants. 

However, Nicola Sturgeon said the Government is "not banning or restricting in law" the size of groups allowed to meet up as it did during earlier stages of the pandemic, but stressed that the country "must take Omicron extremely seriously".

She said anyone meeting up with others should test beforehand using lateral flow kits.

She said: "We are asking everyone - and we will issue strong guidance to this effect - to cut down as far as possible the number of people outside our own households that we are interacting with just now.

"This will help break transmission chains.

"So my key request today is this - before and immediately after Christmas, please minimise your social mixing with other households as much as you can.

"However, if you do plan on socialising - either at home or in indoor public places - we are asking that you limit the number of households represented in your group to a maximum of three. And make sure you test before you go."

Public health experts are particularly concerned about Omicron's "very high attack rate" which "means if just one person in a gathering is infectious, that person is likely to infect many more people in the group than is the case with the Delta variant", said Ms Sturgeon.

She added: "By reducing the numbers of people and households gathering together, we help limit the extent of its spread."

 

The First Minister said the new more transmissible Covid variant is now accounting for 27.5 per cent of Covid cases in Scotland, up from 4% a week ago.

It is expected to be the dominant strain "within days". 

She confirmed that there are now two patients in hospital in Scotland with infections caused by the Omicron variant.

Ms Sturgeon said it was vital to stem the spread of the virus to reduce pressure on the NHS, but insisted that advice would be relaxed for Christmas Day, Christmas Eve or Boxing Day, stating: "We are not asking you to cancel or change your plans, and we are not proposing limits on the size of household gatherings.

"Places of worship will also remain open, with appropriate mitigations.

"But we will issue guidance to help you make Christmas safer."

However, she added that it would be "sensible" to keep family celebrations small.

There was no extension to the vaccine passport scheme and no new restrictions are being imposed on sectors such as retail and hospitality, although they will be asked to reinstate measures to mitigate virus spread.

This includes physical distancing, placing perspex screens at cash desks in shops and queueing systems to avoid crowding in doorways, and in hospitality spacing tables further apart and a potential return to table service only - although guidelines will be issued later this week.

Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government had wanted to go further but is hampered by a lack of Treasury funding to compensate businesses. 

She said: "Because the UK government is at this stage not proposing any further protections - a position I do not agree with - there is no funding generated to compensate businesses for any protections we think are necessary and wish to put in place.

"That is not acceptable in current circumstances and, with the Welsh and Northern Irish governments, we are pressing for a fairer approach that takes account of our devolved responsibilities for protecting public health."

Around £100 million from Scotland Government funds will be used to help support hospitality, food and culture businesses adversely affected by today's guidance and previous advice on deferring works Christmas parties, said Ms Sturgeon.

From tomorrow people aged 18 to 29 will also be able to book Covid booster appointments through the online portal. 

However, Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government does not expect all adults to receive a booster over the next two weeks but was "aiming to get as close to 80% uptake as possible" by the end of December. 

Preliminary evidence suggests that being doubly vaccinated offers far less protection against symptomatic Covid infections caused by Omicron than Delta - around 10-40% after 25 weeks - but that this rises to 75% with a booster. 

It comes as early real world data from South Africa indicates that people who had received two doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccine appeared were 70% less likely to have been hospitalised with Omicron.

The study released by South Africa's largest private health insurance administrator, Discovery Health, was based on 78,000 suspected cases of the new variant up to December 7, after it had become the dominant strain.

This compares with 93% efficacy against hospital admission during South Africa's outbreak of the Delta variant.

The protection was maintained across age groups and in the face of a range of chronic illnesses, said Ryan Noach, the chief executive officer of Discovery Health.

The study also found that hospital-admission risk with Omicron appeared to be 29% lower for the general adult population, compared with South Africa’s first wave of Covid cases in mid-2020 caused by the original Wuhan strain.

It is believed that the build-up of immunity in the population through vaccines and prior infection could explain this reduction in hospitalisations compared to the first wave as - while evidence suggests Omicron is more capable of causing reinfections and has reduced vaccine efficacy against infection - protection against more severe illness remains stronger.

Around 70% or more of South Africa's population has been exposed to Covid at some stage during the past 18 months, with a quarter also fully vaccinated.

Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council, said: “We don’t know how omicron is going to evolve in countries with low vaccination or prior infection rates.”

The researchers cautioned that the extremely high transmissibility of the virus meant that the country's hospitals could still be overwhelmed by Covid admissions due to the sheer number of people becoming infected, a percentage of whom would require treatment.

It is also unclear how the virus will play out in a much older popular such as the UK's, which has three times as many people over 65 compared to South Africa.

Shabir Mahdi of the University of the Witwatersrand, who has led vaccine trials South Africa, said: “The evolution of the Omicron variant is coming at a very different stage of the pandemic.

“That is important to keep at the back of our minds when we see what is unfolding in South Africa and what we might see in other settings, which might have a very different epidemiology."

He added: “In the South African much of the immunity that currently exists is largely because of the prior infection that has taken place during the first three waves.”

Prof Mahdi added scientists are “simply unable to make a meaningful head to head comparison" in the virulence of Omicron compared to previous Covid strains at this stage due to the impact of increased immunity, saying: “[That is] imply because of the underpinning of immunity that currently exists which is different to what existed in the past, and that immunity is going to bring about some change in the clinical course of the infection, including the likelihood of infection progressing to severe disease.”