Covid-19

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 16 February 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

The First Minister:

As I have said before, that is of the utmost importance. Willie Rennie said that conditions are increasingly safe. That is a lot more glib than I would ever be—certainly on the basis of the advice that I have access to. We cannot afford to make assumptions about the safety of the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable settings.

We think that, with vaccination and other mitigations, they can be a lot safer, but we still need to be cautious.

In my statement—I will go into more detail about this when we publish the strategic framework next week—I said that we will set out the order of priority for reopening, with education the top priority. I cannot remember the exact phrase that I used, but I talked about increased family contact as the next priority. Care home visiting is very much part of that.

As I said last week, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport is working on revised guidance right now. I think that she has a meeting with providers of care homes this week—she is telling me that it is some time tomorrow—in order to try to finalise that guidance. I hope that I will be able to say more about that next Tuesday, if not before then, and that we will have greater normality back, but we must continue to be cautious.

The toll that the virus has taken on our care homes is significant and it will be subject to scrutiny—rightly and properly—for some time to come. We think that we have substantially reduced the toll during the second wave, and vaccination is helping us to do more of that, but we cannot throw caution to the wind when we are dealing with the people in our society who are the most vulnerable to the virus.