SNP ministers wanted 'more cautious' approach to lockdown than in England, covid inquiry told

SNP ministers insisted on adopting a "more cautious" approach to easing lockdown restrictions than in England, the UK Covid Inquiry has heard.Professor Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease expert at the University of Edinburgh, accused some senior Scottish Government officials of not having understood that coronavirus could never be fully eradicated.

The academic has been a repeated critic of the lockdown strategy adopted by the Scottish Government.Asked if he felt that senior medical advisers to the government "froze" when confronted with covid data in early 2020, he replied: "Yes."He said then chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood was not "listening" to his warnings.Responding to questions from Jamie Dawson KC, Woolhouse said: "I have to say, I didn’t understand the Scottish Government’s strategy over the summer of 2020."The emphasis was on a very, very cautious relaxation from the lockdown."And it seemed to be important to the politicians that it was more cautious than the one in England, so they were emphasising that they didn’t articulate in any way that I understood, what they thought the public health benefit of this caution actually would be given what we said about a second wave."And then this segued into this idea that actually the falling cases in Scotland would somehow continue, we could end up in zero Covid.”He added: "This was not consistent with the evidence that had been available since February 2020.”Woolhouse explained that covid “transmits very poorly” outdoors and blasted the decision to arrest people taking part in outdoor activities such as mountain climbing.He said: “So there was pretty much zero public health benefit keeping us indoors.