Yousaf wanted tougher Covid curbs in 2021 but warned ‘we’ve lost the dressing room’
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Jamie Dawson KC, lead counsel for the inquiry in Scotland, asked whether the exchange showed that ministers were willing to let the virus “run rampant without control”.
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Mr Yousaf said that they had already asked the public to lock down twice, adding: “No, that is not the interpretation, the interpretation is that we have, as we say in the exchange, we have asked a lot of the public.”
Evidence presented at the inquiry shows that national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch favoured keeping Glasgow in Level 3 Covid restrictions for as long as possible before the first Scotland game during the Euros in summer of 2021.
Mr Yousaf cautioned that increased mixing indoors in homes and pubs by fans watching matches would drive an increase in cases of the then-dominant Delta variant, but warned “we will lose the dressing room” if the fan zone at Glasgow Green is scrapped.
Prof Leitch said: “So more testing. Case finding. Exactly what we want. As Trump said, the problem with you public health idiots is if you do tests you find disease.”
Mr Yousaf told the inquiry that this was “not an easy call”.
By the time Omicron emerged in later 2021, Mr Yousaf said mass vaccinations had resulted in a much lower percentage of infected people being admitted to intensive care or dying as a result of Covid, which eroded the appetite for more severe curbs.
However, the sheer transmissibility of the Omicron strain put “extreme pressure on hospitals”, Mr Yousaf admitted.
He described the winter of 2021/22 as the worst the NHS had seen “at that time in its 75 year history”.
Postponing elective surgery to cope “was not something anyone took lightly”, he said.
Mr Dawson asked the Mr Yousaf why this part of the pandemic, the third wave, was described as a recovery phase and not an emergency phase.
He said there were eight times as many infections as the first wave and almost 5,000 deaths.
Mr Yousaf said that the “recovery phase” was still a health emergency for the NHS, adding that there was “no doubt” there was an impact on chronic health conditions after the decision was made to cancel elective surgeries during the pandemic.
Jamie Dawson KC asked Mr Yousaf during the Covid-19 inquiry: “Given the significant consequences which occurred over this period within the health service, non-urgent healthcare having to be cancelled in a number of health boards, is it not the case that irrespective of the efforts that you have described as having taken, significant non-Covid harm was caused to the people of Scotland over this period?”
Mr Yousaf said: “There is no doubt at all that when you cancel elective surgery, people waiting on a waiting list is not a benign act, there’s completely, undoubtedly an impact on the health.
“That’s why nobody took the decision at that and the health board level (or) government level lightly.”
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