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Beginning her daily briefing, the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announces that there have been nine deaths from coronavirus registered in Scotland over the past 24 hours – the first time since 27 March that the number of daily deaths has been in single figures – bringing the total there to 2,395.
As of 9am this morning there were 15,553 positive cases confirmed, an increase of 49 since yesterday, but a decrease of six in intensive care and a decrease of 21 confirmed cases in hospital.
A scientific adviser to the government has cast doubt over the effectiveness of a blanket quarantine for visitors to the UK.
Prof Robert Dingwall, a member of a sub-group of Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), made the comments after the home secretary, Priti Patel, came under pressure from MPs over the plans which come into force in England on Monday legally requiring most people arriving in the UK to self-isolate for 14 days.
We are not seeing new clusters that are taking off from people who have been travelling abroad. I think we would really need to get the level in this country significantly further down before quarantine started to become a useful measure.
Even then, we would have to see something that is targeted on countries with a significantly higher level of community transmission than ourselves – and there aren’t too many of those around, I’m afraid.
If you’re a holiday destination in Europe in a country that has worked really hard to get its levels of community transmission down and you’re perhaps looking forward to seeing the end of the virus circulating, apart from in isolated outbreaks, then you have to wonder would they really want to welcome a load of British tourists from a country which hasn’t fully got this virus under control yet?
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