NICOLA Sturgeon hit back after Douglas Ross claimed the Scottish government is using a one-size-fits-all approach to restriction levels.
The First Minister was answering questions in Holyrood after announcing that Glasgow will move down to Level 2 on Saturday, and confirming changes for the rest of the country.
The Scottish Tory leader was first up after the announcement and claimed that it was a “disappointing setback” that some areas will be kept in Level 2.
He claimed that half the country will move forward, while the rest remain “stuck in limbo”.
READ MORE: Glasgow to move down to level 2 on Saturday
Ross said: “The First Minister herself said in her statement, 72% of adults in Scotland have now had the first dose of the vaccine, and 46% of adults in Scotland are now protected with both doses of the vaccine.
“The First Minister also said today that we don’t need to apply a one-size-fits-all approach, but it seems that’s exactly what’s happening. Keeping whole cities or councils in Level 2 is not targeted, it’s not a local approach, so let me ask the First Minister: will she consider moving to an approach of targeted interventions instead of council-wide restrictions?”
However, the First Minister was quick to hit back at Ross’s suggestion.
She said: “I don’t pretend the decisions that I or the Government have taken have been perfect, far from it, but everytime we have erred on the side of caution. I think time has told that that was the correct or necessary thing to have done and it’s important that we do now.
“We’re not taking a one-size-fits-all, if we were taking a pure public health approach to this and indeed there will be some public health voices who might prefer that this is what we are doing today, we would simply have held the whole of the country in the levels they are at right now.”
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon update: All Scottish areas' Covid lockdown level changes
Ross also asked the First Minister to provide “evidence” that the NHS was supposedly under threat of imminent severe pressure.
But Sturgeon said: “I did not say the health service was at imminent risk of severe pressure, what I said was, and again this was based on public health advice, is if we don’t act with caution, it is possible that from that unvaccinated or rather not fully vaccinated pool we would still start to see hospital numbers go up.
“The other key point I made is that while earlier this year the NHS coped with 2000 Covid patients at peak, we don’t want to get back to anything like that because that means the health service literally can’t do anything else. We’re trying to get the health service back to normal.”
It comes as scientists have warned a third wave is imminent due to the rise in cases of the Delta variant (Indian variant renamed by WHO).
Prof Ravi Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, said although new cases were "relatively low" the Delta variant had fuelled "exponential growth".
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