Nicola Sturgeon Omicron Briefing: RECAP as First Minister says she can’t rule out further restrictions in Scotland ahead of Christmas
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The briefing comes after guidance was issued last night from Public Health Scotland urging Scots to cancel their Christmas parties over Omicron fears.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Friday morning, Prof Leitch said that Scots should be able to judge themselves what is and isn’t a party following an announcement from Public Health Scotland (PHS) advising people to cancel their Christmas nights out due to the increasing number of cases of the new Omicron variant.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will hold a briefing on the Omicron variant of Covid-19 alongside Scotland’s chief medical officer Gregor Smith and national clinical director Jason Leitch.
Nicola Sturgeon Omicron Briefing: Live updates amid rising variant cases
Hello and welcome to our live blog giving the latest updates as Nicola Sturgeon gets set to brief the nation.
National Clinical Director Jason Leitch says “Scotland knows what a party is” as Scots await news on whether the Omicron Covid-19 variant means Christmas events should be cancelled.
This morning he told BBC Scotland “I think Scotland knows what a party is. I don’t think it’s a family dinner, I don’t think it’s a dinner for four.
“I don’t think it’s a night out where you’re controlled or where the environment is managed.
“I’m not going to get into a spreadsheet of how many people are there, how many bottles of wine there are or how many balloons there are, because that’s not going to help us.”
We are expecting the First Minister to address the nation shortly after 12. Here’s how you can watch the briefing.
There has been significant anger in the hospitality industry over calls to cancel Christmas parties on Thursday evening.
Public Health Scotland said people should postpone plans to help “protect ourselves” despite conflicting advice from the national clinical director.
Omicron is likely to make up the majority of cases in Scotland in the near future according to a Scottish Government evidence report.
It is likely that Nicola Sturgeon will also give the latest update on figures in Scotland.
Yesterday, Scotland recorded one new case of the Omicron coronavirus variant in the past 24 hours, taking the overall number to 109.
Omicron is set to become the dominant coronavirus variant in Scotland within weeks, or even days, a Scottish Government briefing paper has warned.
Nicola Sturgeon starts the briefing issuing a warning that Scotland may be set to face a ‘tsunami of infections’ and that a new wave maybe starting.
She says “To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissability of this new variant, we may be facing - indeed we may be starting to experience - a potential tsunami of infections.”
“We’re not alone in that - everything I am about to share with you about the situation in Scotland is, I believe, broadly reflected in the data for the rest to the UK too. But, we have just published an evidence paper which provides more detail about Omicron in Scotland.”
As of yesterday there were 110 confirmed Omicron cases in Scotland, but Nicola Sturgeon says confirmed cases are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
The latest stats
9 deaths have been reported in the past 24 hours, which takes the total number of deaths registered under the daily definition to 9,707.
The First Minister says that Scotland is facing a third wave of infections.
She says: “Our estimate at this stage is that the doubling time for Omicron cases may be between 2 and 3 days.”
Nicola Sturgeon says the rise in Omicron cases is potentially “the fastest exponential growth we’ve seen in the pandemic so far” and that she “expects it to take over Delta within days not weeks”
“In the final week of November, if we look at all of the Covid cases recorded in Scotland, there were no days when the proportion of cases with S Gene drop out was higher than 1%. However, by last Sunday, 5th December, the proportion had risen to 2%.”
The First Minister stresses that it is important to stop the spread of Covid and the new variant.
“Because Omicron has a much higher R number - a higher transmissibility - than the Delta variant, which for some time now has been the dominant variant in Scotland and much of the world.”
Sturgeon adds a “massive” number of people are likely to need hospital care if surge in cases takes place.
BREAKING
Nicola Sturgeon: “it isn’t any longer a question of IF we are facing a surge in cases”, says it is “a matter of basic and quite brutal arithmetic”
From tomorrow, all household contacts of any Covid cases should isolate for 10 days. Non household contacts can leave isolation with a negative test and double jabbed status.