THE First Minister said “words almost failed” her as she tried to respond to a question from Richard Leonard at Holyrood this afternoon.

Nicola Sturgeon also reminded the Scottish Labour leader that she is not “magic” after he asked her to commit to rolling out Covid vaccines 70% faster.

Initially, Leonard had said that it was “clear” that the Government’s strategic framework of Covid levels had been “abandoned”.

Outlining what level 4 means for mainland Scotland after today's ministerial statement on Covid-19, Leonard said: “The closure of all hospitality, all pubs and restaurants, all non-essential retail, all public buildings, all gyms, all indoor tourism attractions, all museums and galleries, for an indefinite period is a drastic move.

“The First Minister has told us that this is a proportionate public health response given the virulence of the new strain of the virus, so will the First Minister also make a proportionate response in other ways.”

The Labour MSP, who has a Central Scotland list seat, went on: “Will she step up government support for businesses, workers, and families across Scotland directly affected by this government decision. Will the Government step up levels of support for mental health and mental wellbeing services?

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“And if the new strain of the virus is 70% more transmissible than the original virus, will the government urgently increase the number of daily tests carried out in Scotland by 70%? Improve the capacity, utilisation and performance of Test and Protect by 70%, and will the First Minister commit today, as soon as it is practically possible, to a 70% acceleration in the rollout of the vaccination programme?”

As he finished his question, MSPs groaned. In response, the First Minister said she hopes “people will forgive me but I’m, like many people over the country, probably feeling a bit overtired at the moment, but words almost fail me in response to that, I have to be perfectly honest”.

A small round of applause began in the chamber as Sturgeon finished speaking.

After a pause, she went on: “Firstly … we haven’t abandoned our strategic approach. What we have done is not stand there static clinging to an approach while we’ve got a train coming down the track that is going to run us over.

“We’ve decided to respond to evidence that we’ve got a new strain of the virus, that none of us saw coming … we have decided to respond in a preventative and cautionary way in order to make sure that by the end of January we don’t have a health service that has been overwhelmed, that we haven’t run out of hospital beds and ICU beds and instead we’ve managed to ward this off and suppress the virus again.

“I am so sorry that we are having to do this, but I would be even sorrier, and people would have every right to be very very angry at me, if I didn’t take this action and let the country just deal with the impact of what is coming down the track at us.”

The First Minister addressed Leonard’s second point by saying that her Government would “continue to look at how to step up support … across our range of responsibilities”.

She went on: “In terms of Richard Leonard’s final two points, that is, I’m afraid, where words start to fail me.

“We have plenty of testing capacity, we are building up our capacity. These are not simple equations with a virus being 70% more transmissible meaning we need 70% more test capacity.

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“The reason I can give some of the detail that I give every day is because we are testing so many people and we will continue to make sure we’ve got that capacity.”

Sturgeon said that the Government is also “rolling out lateral flow testing” but warned that the sensitivity of those tests still needs to be confirmed.

“On the vaccine,” she said, “we will roll this vaccine out just as quickly as supplies will allow us to do.”

“I cannot, and nobody would love more than me to be able to magic vaccine supplies out of nowhere, but I cannot do that unfortunately.

“So, we are working hard … tens of thousands of people have already had their first dose of the vaccine, we’re hoping that other vaccines will get approval in the UK shortly and as soon as those supplies become available we will get those vaccines to people.”

The First Minister wound up by stressing that the vaccine rollout’s speed was dependent on supply chains and manufacturers, adding: “I really would hope that Richard Leonard would understand that.”