This morning, I took receipt of the first batch of responses from local authorities to freedom of information requests about teachers who have spent lockdown shielding and are expected to return to work this week. There are 151 such teachers in North Ayrshire and 134 in Glasgow. Those numbers paint a picture of thousands of teachers and thousands more pupils who are in the most vulnerable categories and who are expected to return to the school environment with Covid still at large. For teachers and pupils at the upper end of secondary schools, their anxiety must be all the more acute.

The First Minister told Willie Rennie that she expects outbreaks in schools to take place. What reassurance can she give to people in vulnerable groups that they are safe to be in school, and what measures will she ask schools to employ to keep them safe?

Those are important issues and I seek to give assurance in a number of ways. First, the advice that we give people who are in the shielded category is not given lightly. We consider it carefully and it is informed by clinical and expert opinion, which will continue to be the case. Our advice that shielding could pause from the start of August was advice that we agonised over and that we will keep under review.

Before I go on to schools, I note that we have produced workplace guidance for people who are in the shielded category and their employers to ensure that the right considerations are taken into account to make workplaces safe.

In schools, the guidance has put in place a number of mitigating factors to ensure that schools are safe and that the right protections are there. Again, we will keep that under close review. The Deputy First Minister will cover more of this ground when he makes a statement to Parliament this afternoon, which will include extensions to the position around testing.

We will not hesitate to change the advice and guidance that we give people in the shielded category if we think that that is necessary. By keeping the virus under control, we all have a responsibility to help to ensure that that is not necessary. On an on-going basis, we are seeking to develop the range of information that we give people so that they are better able to assess their own risk in the particular area in which they live.

These issues will be under review literally daily.