Nicola Sturgeon to announce new Covid strategic framework

Nicola Sturgeon will set out her new strategic framework for dealing with coronavirus on Tuesday.

The First Minister will speak in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday afternoon as the Scottish Government’s blueprint for managing and recovering from Covid-19 is published.

When she updated MSPs on the pandemic earlier this month, she said Scotland was “through the worst” of the Omicron wave and the situation was “much more positive” than at the start of the year.

On Monday, Ms Sturgeon said it would be “unacceptable” for public health decisions of the devolved administrations to be impacted by funding decisions taken by the UK Government.

During a visit to the Social Bite cafe in Edinburgh, the First Minister was asked if she was considering automatic trigger points for new restrictions.

She said: “In terms of fixed automatic trigger points – we need to be a bit cautious about that.

“Because we know that, if we look at the risks we may face in the future in the form of new variants for example, not all variants have the same impact.”

She continued: “You need to have attention to data, to evidence.

“But inevitably, there will have to be judgment applied in any given situation about the actual severity of the threat that any new risk might pose.”

Ahead of the announcement, Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane called on the government to adopt policies from his party’s paper entitled Back To Normality.

He said: “We must see Nicola Sturgeon outline a detailed roadmap out of the pandemic, with a greater emphasis put on trusting the public to act responsibly.

“I’m pleased the First Minister belatedly followed the advice of experts and announced that pupils will no longer have to wear facemasks in classrooms from the end of the month.

“With the data on the virus being much more encouraging, we have to move away from blanket restrictions and instead trust the public to do the right thing.”