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Prof Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, told the Today programme this morning that coronavirus cases in Scotland were “dramatically falling”. He explained:
We had five out of the top 10 local authorities in the UK, now we have none in the top 150.
We’ve now seen hospitalisations fall. Around 3% of positive people get admitted to hospital but they are now younger, relatively healthy and discharged quicker. But some stay, and we’ve had many deaths over the last few days.
The Scotland-England game gave us a spike because of travel, not necessarily Wembley. Unfortunately, from a sporting perspective, Scotland went out far too early. But epidemiologically speaking, that probably did us some favours.
We tested a lot of these fans and for a short time [cases] went from 1:1 male-female to 9:1 male-female. It has now returned to 1:1.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist from Imperial College London who has produced some of the most influential modelling used to inform government Covid policy, told the Today programme this morning that it was “too early to tell” whether the recent decline in the daily number of recorded cases would prove permanent and that it was important to “remain cautious”.
But he said that the situation was changing, and that by the autumn “the bulk of the pandemic” would be behind us. He said:
We won’t see for several more weeks what the effect of the unlocking is.
We need to remain cautious, especially with the potential increase in contact rates again as the weather becomes less fine and schools return.
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