Stay local: Jason Leitch says people should 'use their common sense' as the stay at home message is lifted

Scotland’s National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch, said that as restrictions begin to lift from today people need to ‘use their common sense’ and stay within their local areas.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Friday morning, Professor Leitch said that the lifting of the stay at home rule was deliberately “not a dramatic change” and that they are still asking people to stay within their local authority areas.

He said: “In some city areas, that is not very big, but if you’re in Highland, that’s quite a long way, so local might be different depending on where you live.

"It means you can go to a different park, you can maybe climb a different mountain, you can maybe even see some family who you haven’t seen for some time because they are a little bit further away.”

Jason Leitch says people should 'use their common sense' as the stay at home message is lifted.

When asked if there was a specific way to define stay local, Prof Leitch said that they are “asking people to use their common sense” as the rules ease, he said it was a “radical idea” to ask the population for help but that’s what they have been doing across the UK for the past year.

He said: "We’ve set the limit at the local authority, and then on Monday more will open. Some economic opening and some educational opening that people will be able to travel to because they won’t have to just stay at home.”

He went on to compare possible future travel between the four nations as “travel corridors”, saying that your destination would have to have the same rules as where you’re leaving from.

He said: “We’ve said that in three weeks time, if the data is good and remains stable or reducing, then on April 26 we will allow travel around the whole of Scotland and some tourism to open etc…

"That would be the moment that we would allow travel across the border for non-essential reasons”.

He said that he can’t offer absolute confirmation now because they don’t know what the data is going to say in three weeks time.

He added that advisors will review the situation following the easing of restrictions this weekend, and only then will they be able to advise if further easing is safe to go ahead as planned.

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