The ‘circuit breaker’ is being seriously considered for Scotland

In Scotland, a so-called “circuit breaker” lockout is being seriously considered, confirmed National Clinical Director Jason Leitch.

The Scottish government adviser told the BBC the idea is being actively considered, but “not yet”.

Professor Leitch said that the introduction of severe restrictions would be a short-term pain for long-term gain.

On Wednesday, Scotland recorded 640 cases and seven deaths, its highest death toll since mid-June.

The Scottish government has stressed that no decisions have been taken.

Speaking on BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland program, Professor Leitch suggested that the upcoming school holidays could be a factor in the preparations.

‘Strict travel restrictions’

He said, “The theory is that if you had a stricter order, a stay-at-home order, it wouldn’t have to include everything, so including schools would be optional, so this would give you time to go into winter.

“School holidays would be one of the things we would consider because it is an easier way to include schools.”

When asked if the circuit breaker was imminent, he said: “Not yet. Our advice is that we are certainly considering it. This is an idea that comes from all over the world through Sage, the great scientific group that advises the entire Kingdom. United and now our Scottish Government advisory group is looking into it. “

He added that the challenge with a circuit breaker was that it would include a strict travel restriction and the closure of some businesses.

He said the Scottish government was reluctant to add restrictions to Scotland, but if he thought it would be better in the end, a “pain to win” situation then he could move on.

He also said that scientific data suggested that a circuit breaker lockout would work better if the R (playback) number was just slightly above 1 because it created momentum to bring it to safe levels below 1.

He said: “We are concerned that we are a little higher than that. There is less benefit in going from 1.7 to 1.5 as it would go from 1.1 to 0.8; you can see why that would be more advantageous.” .

With a total of more than 3,600 new cases in the past seven days, Professor Leitch said infections were still accelerating, even without counting groups of college students.

He said that the main risk in the spread of the virus remained domestic mixing, which could be seen in almost all cases.

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He said that additional measures to slow the spread of the virus would focus on two areas: travel and places where people mix. And the dilemma came at the time.

He said: “That is the dilemma: how long do you wait to see if the current measures are working? It takes two weeks to find out if someone has contracted the virus and spread it to other people.”

“Everything we do has this horrible delay, so we have conversations about when we should do something next, because by the time we do it we could be too late.”

Professor Leitch’s comments come as the Prime Minister prepares to give the results of her three-week review of lockdown restrictions in Scotland.

People are unable to visit each other’s homes across the country and on Wednesday, Nicola Sturgeon warned of the dangers of letting the virus “get out of control.”

Deputy Prime Minister John Swinney told the Covid-19 committee in Holyrood that “detailed work” was underway on the circuit breaker, which he described as a “more aggressive disruption of the development of the pandemic.”

Swinney said he would not describe this as a “specific proposal,” saying instead it was “more the emergence of the possibility that if the pandemic continues to grow at an accelerated rate in the future, there may be a need to take some what I would describe as an interruption action to try to slow down more and more aggressively the development of the pandemic. “

He stressed to the MSPs: “No decisions have been made to make that the case.”