David Stewart will be sadly missed.

Yesterday, I was contacted by a shielded constituent with cancer, who has self-isolated for 12 weeks. In her mid-70s, her dearest wish is to see her grandchildren, but she now faces an additional six weeks of isolation, and is torn between following the guidance, and seeing her grandchildren, possibly for the last time. Surely the infection risk is minimal by staying outdoors and maintaining social distancing while visiting loved ones. Will the First Minister explain the criteria for ending my constituent’s isolation and that of others in similar situations? Is the criterion that there should be no new local or national cases for a week, or for a month? People need to know that there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel.

I absolutely sympathise with the sentiment of that question. I do not have direct experience of how it feels to be in the shielded group right now, so I can imagine only how it has felt for the past number of weeks and how it feels to face more weeks of advice to continue to shield. A member of my family is in the shielded category, so I see some of the impacts of that.

We are giving that guidance and advice for the protection of people in the shielded group, not because we want to keep them in isolation for any longer than is necessary but because we know that the risks of the virus to them are significantly higher than they are for the rest of us. Their risk of becoming seriously unwell and, frankly, their risk of dying are considerably higher. The guidance is for people’s own protection. I hope that people, whatever the frustrations that they understandably feel, will understand that.

Next week, we hope to be able to amend the guidance to allow people in the shielded group to go outside for exercise, albeit they will still be advised to stay 2m from others and not to mix with other households.

We have a clinical cell that gives us advice on the shielded group, and all the recommendations are based on that advice. Over the period from now until 31 July, we want to move to a situation in which we will be able to give shielded individuals much more tailored advice. However, that will not be based on the criterion that Mr Gibson mentioned, which involved whether certain levels of cases might still be present. Instead, such advice would take account of individuals’ specific conditions and also their age, ethnicity and other relevant factors. That will then enable them to have conversations with their own clinicians about the level of risk that they feel able to take, how to manage and mitigate that, and what support is in place for them.

That is where the test and protect process—and, going back to my answer to Christine Grahame’s question, our wider surveillance system—will be very important, because a key part of that will involve providing individuals with data about the virus risk and how it is changing, in terms of the prevalence of the virus in their areas. We want to get to that position as quickly as possible, but we need to base our decision to do so on the soundest possible scientific and clinical evidence. That is why the process is taking—and will continue to take—a bit of time to carry out. All the nations of the United Kingdom are going through similar processes right now.

I will end by saying to everyone in the shielded category that we are not forgetting about them and we are acutely aware of how difficult the situation is for them. We want to move toward easing the guidance, on an on-going basis, as much as we can. However, the backstop position is that, by the end of July at the latest, they will be in a much better position whereby they can base their own judgments about how they live their lives on better and much more nuanced evidence.