Nicola Sturgeon has been told to “come clean” about the handling of Scotland’s first major coronavirus outbreak after it was reported she overruled advisors who suggested warning the public.
The first minister, who has repeatedly denied any suggestion she attempted to suppress details of the outbreak, is facing fresh questions over the timeline of events surrounding a Nike conference in Edinburgh in the early days of the pandemic.
According to emails released under Freedom of Information laws to the Sunday Times, Ms Sturgeon’s closest aide, Liz Lloyd, said the outbreak was “a legitimate public interest matter” in an email on March 5.
She said the disclosure of the incident, which took place in late February 2020, “could be reassuring information for the public around the increase in numbers, demonstrate we’re still at containment [and] that contact tracing works”.
Ms Lloyd said this view was shared by the first minister, then health secretary Jeane Freeman, and then deputy chief medical officer Gregor Smith.
Patient confidentiality
The emails reveal how a day later, on March 6, then chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood warned telling the public could risk breaching patient confidentiality and disrupt efforts to trace contacts of those who had been infected.
Details of the outbreak were not made fully public until a BBC documentary three months later revealed there was a positive Covid case at the event.
Health Protection Scotland confirmed last week that a single case of Covid among 71 delegates at the conference led to 38 further infections.
Ms Sturgeon faced repeated grillings from opposition parties over the outbreak and while she denied the situation was covered up, she said she understands concerns about how the information was handled.
Full transparency
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “Nicola Sturgeon must urgently come clean on the scale of this cover-up. These are further damning revelations about the earliest known outbreak of the virus in Scotland.
“There should have been full transparency from the first minister and the SNP Government at the earliest opportunity.
“As someone working in the health service as Covid struck, I know we would have been able to respond better if we knew exactly what we were dealing with and when.
“Nicola Sturgeon must be upfront. Was this the only occasion where she overruled medical advisers and senior colleagues? Is this the only time the public were kept in the dark over an outbreak?
“She has regularly claimed to have followed the science during the pandemic, but went against one of her chief medical advisers at the very outset.
“The public deserve to know the whole truth as quickly as possible surrounding this conference.”
Full scrutiny
Scottish Labour’s Jackie Baillie said the latest revelations must be “scrutinised fully by any public inquiry” – with one due to be established by the end of the year.
She added: “Whilst we knew Calderwood had advised against transparency on grounds of patient confidentiality and the first minister sided with her, it hadn’t been appreciated until now that the first minister did so against the advice of her own health secretary and chief adviser.”
The Scottish Government said “all appropriate steps” were taken to protect public health following the Nike conference, with more than 60 contacts traced in Scotland and a further 50 in England.
A spokesman said: “While the Nike conference in Edinburgh was one of several routes by which Covid-19 came to Scotland, the University of Glasgow’s genome sequencing report confirms that the local public health response was effective in managing and containing spread of that particular strain of Covid-19 in Scotland.”