Nicola Sturgeon to set out lockdown easing plans

Nicola Sturgeon will set out the Scottish Government’s plan to ease lockdown restrictions this afternoon.

She has said decisions in Scotland will be “driven by data rather than dates".

It comes after Boris Johnson published the plans for England yesterday which could see the majority of restrictions lifted by June, with a gradual easing beginning from the end of March.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has warned this may lead to 30,000 more deaths by summer 2022 because many people will remain vulnerable to the virus.

The phased return of schools in Scotland began yesterday, with children in P1 to P3 allowed to go back to the classroom for the first time since before Christmas.

And the Scottish Government also previously announced indoor care home visits could resume from early March.

The First Minister will make a statement to parliament at 14:20 on the framework which will give an “indicative order of priority” on easing.

At the coronavirus briefing yesterday, she said: “The framework will not set out hard and fast dates for the easing of all restrictions – as I indicated last week, it is really important in this stage in the pandemic, particularly given everything we learned from our emergence from the first lockdown, that we are driven by data more than we are driven by dates.

“However, we will seek to set out tomorrow an indicative order of priority and the likely phasing of, firstly the gradual lifting of the current lockdown restrictions and then, in due course, a return to the geographic levels system when we would decide whether all or parts of the country, may by moved out of level four down to level three.”