Scotland’s EURO 2020 exit did country ‘some favours’ in tackling COVID

Scotland's exit from the Euro 2020 championship coincided with a dramatic fall in COVID infections, National Clinical Director Jason Leitch has said.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, the Scottish Government advisor said cases had fallen rapidly in the weeks since Steve Clarke’s men were knocked out.

He said: “We had five out of the top 10 local authorities in the UK, now we have none in the top 150.”

He added: “We’ve now seen hospitalisations fall.

“Around 3 per cent of positive people get admitted to hospital but they are now younger, relatively healthy and discharged quicker. But some stay, and we’ve had many deaths over the last few days.”

Leitch told the programme: “The Scotland-England game gave us a spike because of travel, not necessarily Wembley. Unfortunately, from a sporting perspective, Scotland went out far too early.

“But epidemiologically speaking, that probably did us some favours,” he said.

“We tested a lot of these fans and for a short time (cases) went from 1:1 male-female to 9:1 male-female. It has now returned to 1:1.”

Speaking alongside Leitch on the programme, Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, said the pandemic could be largely over within the next three months.

The academic said cases in England are now “plateauing” and that vaccines had “fundamentally changed” the equation in combating the disease.

The academic - who was previously a government adviser and whose work was key to the first lockdown in March 2020 - had previously suggested the easing of restrictions south of the border on July 19 could see cases reach 100,000 a day.

However, coronavirus cases in the UK fell for the sixth day in a row yesterday - down 15,000 cases on the last week.

Ferguson told the Today programme: “The effect of vaccines has been huge in reducing the risk of hospitalisation and death and I’m positive that by late September, October time we will be looking back at most of the pandemic.

“We will still have COVID with us, we will still have people dying from COVID but we will (have) put the bulk of the pandemic behind us.”