Mainland Scotland will be placed in a full lockdown from midnight on Monday for the duration of January in an effort to stop the coronavirus pandemic spiralling out of control, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.
The first minister said in an emergency statement to Holyrood all Scotland’s schools would remain closed for the whole of January, shifting to online learning, because of the risks posed by the new Covid variant B117.
The new “stay at home” rules, mirroring the strict controls imposed last March, would also be legally enforced and greatly restrict who was able to travel, the Scottish government’s cabinet agreed earlier on Monday.
While Scotland has not experienced the sharp escalation in the number of Covid patients in hospital seen in parts of England over the last week, the number of positive cases has risen to a new record high every day, hitting 2,464 on Sunday.
Sturgeon told MSPs she was more alarmed about the threat posed by Covid-19 than she had been since…
— to www.theguardian.com
