Jason Leitch on how Scotland will exit the coronavirus lockdown

On Thursday Nicola Sturgeon announced that – as long as those numbers continue to decrease – Scotland can expect to go into phase one of recovery on May 28.

The plan – Scotland’s route map through and out of the crisis –offers up the first steps in a four-stage process that ends with a stage where the virus is no longer considered a significant threat to public health.

Unlike Boris Johnson’s botched bid to lift lockdown south of the Border, this document is being offered up a week in advance, with the aim of helping people plan ahead. But it’s not a set of prescriptive rules.

“There are some things we are still saying are required,” Jason Leitch, Scotland’s clinical director told the Sunday National. “And there are other things which must now be judgements. That’s how society usually works and people must now be mature and use common sense.”

There’s one basic point he is keen to stress – stay more than two metres away from others and the risks, even if someone has the virus, are judged to be negligible. The World Health Organisation advises one metre.

“If we continue to distance then the virus has less ability to move,” he says. “It can’t jump big spaces, it can’t go through walls. You’d need to work very hard to catch it at further than two metres.”

That, he says, is the rule to keep in mind throughout phase one, which include being able to socialise with one other household at a time, out of doors.

Leitch says these visits should not be considered “normal” yet. “Our public health advice would be to avoid surfaces and anything that could be contaminated,” he says. “So you might want to take a flask of coffee with you, or a can of juice if you’re taking the kids or whatever, at least for now. Remember – we’re still coming back to normal and this is a step towards normal. You shouldn’t be going into the house, or having afternoon tea in the garden. Not yet.”

But Leitch believes that local authorities have to respond accordingly to the new rules, opening public toilets in parks and other green spaces. He says: “We would also expect local authorities to use a common sense approach to opening public amenities and for those to be very well looked after and very well cleaned.”

Outdoor catering will open, while outdoor non-contact sports such as golf and tennis will return at phase one too. If you can swim outdoors or hike locally – the recommendation is that you don’t travel for more than about five miles on “recreational trips” – that’s also permitted under guidance.

For some, phase one has frustrations written in – partners who don’t live together are being told that after two months apart they can now only meet at distance.

There are questions about how long the Scottish Government can reasonably expect single people to embrace celibacy before they lose faith in the advice. More than a third of Scots live alone according to 2018 data, and many single young people in shared households living apart from partners will not be captured by these stats.

Leitch insists clarity on covering this will follow soon. “We also know that there are couples living apart and we’ve been asked about when they can come back together,” says Leitch. “We are not there yet but we hope to get there fast and the stages could go quicker than we think.”

Likewise if you moved back in with mum and dad during lockdown, moving “home” is not on the cards quite yet. “That will be a later phase,” he says. “We are still not mixing households and the physical distancing applies. So you can’t move unless you are one of the exceptions, like a child moving between two parents’ households.”

WHILE people will continue to be advised to work from home, those who work outdoors can now return. Childminders, who currently only accept key worker children, can start to take more charges with detailed guidance to be released in coming days. But family should not step in to help out with childcare at this stage, Leitch adds.

“We expect businesses to try as hard as possible to use flexible working practices, to be family friendly, to allow as many people as possible to work from home,” he says.

“We’re not suggesting that elderly grandparents look after children yet. That will come – it’s a crucial part of how our society works. But for now we’re saying no to family looking after children.

“It’s harsh. We see that inconsistency. But we’ve made a decision based on evidence about managing risk. That’s what makes this message so challenging.”

It’s an approach based on the theories of British public health scientist Geoffrey Rose in the 1980s, which show how a large number of people at a small risk may lead to more cases of disease than the small number who are at high risk. It works with a wide range of public health interventions globally and continuing research still puts its effectiveness above concentration specifically on high risks groups.

It’s the reason, explains Leitch, that though one person driving from Glasgow to Loch Lomond to fish might be of negligible risk to that individual, it will not be allowed until phase two. “If we let everyone do that, and they do, the population will suffer,” he says. “The individual risk added up over a huge number of people changes the nature of what we are doing.”

But for some people the serious business of life will at last begin to resume at phase one – essential services such as Children’s Hearings will start with social distancing in place, eye and dental care will re-open gradually and hospitals will start to welcome back more non-emergency patients.

For others the changes will still not seem like enough – worries about businesses, job losses and future sustainability are all too real. For some a world that still lacks many things that make us human – whether that’s hugs from grandkids, a holiday in the sun, or a night on a sweaty dance floor with friends – can seem hard to swallow. But Leitch insists it’s coming.

“Society will return to some sort of normal – I just can’t put a time limit on this,” he says. “It will depend on how we behave as a society. It will depend on how the virus behaves – we don’t know what it will do in July and August. It’s an independent player in this game.

“And the third thing it will depend upon is science – so can we find a treatment, a vaccine, do things that will restrict this virus’s ability to infect the population. That will be key.”