NICOLA Sturgeon warned yesterday that Scotland can expect a “significant outbreak of coronavirus” after the country’s first case was diagnosed in Tayside at the weekend.
The First Minister issued the warning at a briefing at St Andrews House in Edinburgh, alongside Health Secretary Jeane Freeman and Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer.
She said the Government was “planning for the likelihood of a significant outbreak of coronavirus”.
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“We would expect to see further cases confirmed in the days to come,” she said.
The First Minister’s briefing came after she took part in the UK Government’s Cobra meeting.
Sturgeon said the Tayside patient who was diagnosed with the Covid-19 virus after travelling from the north of Italy, was “not seriously ill at this stage”, but had been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure and was receiving treatment in isolation.
“That is not necessarily going to be the case going forward for future cases,” she said.
People will be told to self-isolate “unless there is a clinical need for them to be in hospital”, said Sturgeon.
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The Scottish Government said clinicians had begun tracing the person’s contacts, gathering details of the places they had visited and the people they have been in contact with since returning to the UK.
Italy has registered more than 1100 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the outbreak came to light in its northern regions last month, and at least 29 people have died.
The First Minister said, “we are in the containment phase” of the virus, but the situation was under “ongoing review”.
She added that the Scotland v France Six Nations match is still scheduled to go ahead in Edinburgh this weekend and there has been no change to plans for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow later in the year.
Cobra had “signed off on a four-nation action plan” to guide the countries’ response to the virus, which will be published today, Sturgeon said.
Asked about the possibility of big events being called off, Sturgeon said: “We are not at that stage yet – decisions will be guided very firmly by the scientific advice that all four governments are receiving.
“The public should be reassured that there are well-established procedures and protocols in place.”
Earlier, Calderwood told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme that the first person to test positive in Scotland was “clinically well”, adding they were “transferred to hospital last night as a precautionary measure only”.
She said: “The public can really help us and we’re going to keep saying these messages – wash your hands, don’t touch your face, sneeze or cough into a tissue and bin it immediately, and that can still help to contain this so we reduce the number of people it’s transmitted to.
“We would expect at least 80% of people to have very mild illness that they will recover quickly from and a very small number of people that need hospitalisation.
“At the moment, this is just precautionary so there’s no issue at all with our NHS services or capacity.
“If this does spread throughout Scotland, it will become business as usual.”
Asked if the case was related to Scotland’s Six Nations rugby match away to Italy, she said: “We know that some areas of Italy the Italian government have put in lockdown because of a very high risk of coronavirus transmission there and we now have many cases all over Italy.
“I think that we will find other parts of Italy will have cases and perhaps there are many people who have travelled for all sorts of events – this risk now is going to become not specific to certain sporting events but the fact that the virus is now spreading across Europe.”
Meanwhile, 10 Scots who had been confined to their hotel in Tenerife because of the virus, were last night on their way back home.
They should have left a week ago, but their flight was initially disrupted by sandstorms, before the Costa Adeje Palace hotel, where they were staying, was hit by an outbreak of the virus.
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