 Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee in 2021, our last meeting before recess. This morning we will take evidence on the latest ministerial statement and subordinate legislation. I would like to welcome to the meeting John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, Professor Jason Leitch, national clinical director, Amanda Gordon, deputy director of local interventions, outbreak management and Derek Graves, head of operational vaccine division. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any remarks before we move on to questions? Thank you, convener, and good morning. I'm grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss a number of matters, including updates to Parliament on Covid-19. I set out by the First Minister on Tuesday that Omicron continues to spread rapidly across the country. We are now seeing the impacts of rising cases in staff absences across the economy. We do not yet know conclusively if the proportion of Omicron cases needing hospital care is lower, higher or the same as with Delta, although there are early signs from the analysis undertaken by the University of Edinburgh that lower levels of hospitalisation may be likely. However, even if the proportion of cases needing hospital care is lower, a smaller proportion of a much larger number of infections will place a significant burden on the national health service. It is therefore critical that we continue to respond if both effectively and proportionately to mitigate the impacts of Omicron. Our vaccination programme is central to our response, and there has been a significant acceleration of the programme in the past week. I encourage everyone to book their booster appointment as soon as possible. In addition to vaccination, other protective measures will help us to reduce the impacts of Omicron on our society and economy in the immediate term, and those measures are necessary to be undertaken. We should all now be reducing our contacts with people in other households. If people are gathering with loved ones this weekend to celebrate Christmas, it is essential that we do all that we can to be as safe as possible. That includes keeping gatherings as small as family circumstances allow, ensuring that everyone takes a test before meeting, maintaining good hygiene and ventilating indoor spaces. The First Minister said on Tuesday that, after this weekend, we should all stay at home as much as possible and continue to limit our contacts. That includes minimising socialising over hugmanay and new year. Staying at home and minimising contact outside their own households is critical in the period ahead. If we all follow this advice, we will help to limit the spread of infection. In addition, the Scottish Government is introducing further proportionate protections primarily affecting public events and hospitality. Those are necessary to help to stem the increase in cases, safeguard health and protect the national health service, the emergency services and the economy, while we complete and get the full effect of the booster programme. First, on 26 December, inclusive for a period of three weeks, we intend to place limits on the size of public events that can take place. That does not apply to private life events such as weddings. That will, of course, make sports matches, including football, effectively spectator-free over this three-week period. It will also mean that large-scale hugmanay celebrations will not proceed. That will reduce the risk of widespread transmission and the impact on emergency services attending these events. Second, during the same period, non-professional indoor contact sports for adults should not take place and guidance will reflect that. Finally, on 27 December, inclusive for a period of three weeks, we intend to introduce some further protections in hospitality settings and other indoor places to reduce transmission risks. That includes table service in venues, serving alcohol for consumption on these premises and one-metre distancing between groups. convener, I want to highlight one further change to our proposals on this point that were announced on Tuesday. Having engaged with the sector, we now propose to require that nightclubs should not operate as such for this three-week period. While it would be open to them to operate with distancing and table service, and that option will remain, we consider that closure in regulations combined with financial support may reduce losses and help these businesses whether what we hope will be a short period until they are able to operate normally again. That change will be affected by a separate Scottish statutory instrument coming into force at the same time, which my officials have already shared with the committee this morning. The Scottish Government is acutely aware of the financial implications for many businesses. The First Minister has detailed additional support, totaling £375 million that will be available, including £100 million announced last week, to support businesses directly impacted by Omicron. An update will be provided on the breakdown and allocation of funding as soon as possible. Eligibility and guidance for the £66 million hospitality fund was published on the Scottish Government website on Tuesday. We expect further guidance for the remaining funds to be published shortly. I look forward to answering questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister, for the update. I will move to questions. In the last week, there has been a 67.1 per cent increase in the number of lateral flow tests that have been distributed, which is positive. I think that the general public is cautionary with the new variant. I am slightly confused with the daily figures that are being published, because I was expecting them to be doubling every day. I think that they peaked earlier in the week just under 6,000. Yesterday, we dropped to 2,434 positive cases. Is there an understanding why the figures being reported are not as we predicted at this stage? I think that the sequence of data, convener, over the course of the past two to three weeks has essentially substantiated the rapid acceleration of cases driven by the Omicron variant. There are problems with the data yesterday, which was a consequence of a data processing issue that Public Health Scotland is aware of and is handling. I have not seen the data for today, but I would expect the data for today to essentially take account of the fact that the numbers yesterday understated the number of positive cases that were in the system. If you look at the sequence of data, there is generally, and there is not a precise relationship between the number of positive cases and the positivity proportion that is reported on a daily basis. It is not precise, because in the positive cases, Public Health Scotland extracts the people who have previously tested positive. The positive cases number is essentially new positive cases. If somebody has already tested positive, that will be extracted from the system. The relationship between new cases and the positivity rate is not precise, but it is pretty close. If you look at the data yesterday, those two numbers have no relationship. There was a problem with the data processing yesterday. I think that that will be rectified today and probably tomorrow, and we will see the pattern of significant growth being reflected in that data. Perhaps my officials want to add anything to what I have said in that. Professor Leitch has asked us to come in. Would you like to come in, Professor Leitch? Thanks. Good morning, everybody. The Deputy First Minister is absolutely right. Today's figures will correct yesterday's number and give a new number for today that will look more like you would expect. The lesson here is do not look at individual days, look at patterns, and if you look at the seven-day rate, it is accelerating significantly. The other thing to remind you of is that, remember, delta is falling as Omicron rises. What is doubling is the Omicron element of the total, not the total. Once Omicron becomes the only variant, the whole number will double at the Omicron rate. Just now, we have remnants of a significant remnant of the delta wave, which could be as many as 2,000-3,000 cases a day. That number, if you remember, a few weeks ago, was diminishing. It is not doubling. In fact, it is falling. The Omicron number, inside that 6,000, is doubling at three days. That is why it is quite awkward to look at a single-days data and make a judgment. You have to do it over a prolonged period. Mr Swinney is absolutely right. Yesterday, there was a technical IT problem that only affected the reporting to us. It did not affect the reporting to the individuals who require the positive test news. It did not affect test and protect. All of that worked. It was just the final number that came to us that was lower than it should have been, and that will be connected at 2 o'clock today. We all understand the importance of boosters, but we still have nearly 10 per cent of the population unvaccinated, especially in our larger cities. A constituent of mine wrote to me recently after watching our Vaccine Inhesitancy Committee, which took place on 9 December. I would like to read what she wrote to me. She is from Angela in Air, and she is around the same age as me. Hi, Siobhan. I just wanted to get in touch to let you know that I have just got out of hospital after contracting life-threatening Covid-19. I was hospitalised for nine weeks. I was blue-lighted from Air to Crosshouse and was in high-dependency unit and ICU with my oxygen levels at 38 per cent. I had been unwell for four or five days prior and was advised just to self-isolate and drink plenty of water and take paracetamol. Unfortunately, things progressed. I do not remember much parts from seeing my fiancee and doctor and then being an ambulance. Unfortunately, I had not been vaccinated. Not because I was against it or anything, I had just landed a new job and missed my appointment as I had to go down the cell to be trained. I sat and I watched patients come and go from the hospital bed in high-dependency. They were a lot older than me—people in their 70s with COPD and Covid—but they had had their vaccinations. Yes, they may have been poorly and still required oxygen, but they were going home after two weeks. I watched this happen week after week and I felt like an idiot for not getting myself vaccinated. I nearly died. I was touched and go a few times. I do not think that this is not real. It is very real. He does not look as though it is going away anytime soon. I have been left with fibrosis, a cluster of clots in my lung. I have panic attacks, palpitations. My anxiety is through the roof. I have Covid flashes. I have lost three stone in five weeks and I have lost most of the muscle mass in my legs and I cannot walk from the kitchen to the living room. I cannot stand for a length of time to go upstairs, and I literally am having to train myself to walk again. I could go on, but I will not. I just do not want this happening to anyone else. If anyone is hesitant about getting vaccinated, then do not. However, a rotten you feel after your jag is nothing compared to losing your life. How can we get this powerful message out to the general public about the importance of getting vaccinated, especially to the 10 per cent that still have not gone for their first job? I think that the steps that you have taken today help enormously in that respect. I think that the circumstances that Angela Constance has, and I hope that Angela Constance is regaining her strength, although it is very obvious that she has suffered severe health impacts as a consequence of contracting Covid. It is important that real-life examples are shared widely with the public. In our communication, we use a mixture of the strength of clinical opinion, which we deploy in our communication. The chief medical officer, Professor Leitch, national clinical director and other clinicians strongly articulate the issues in the rationale why individuals should seek vaccination, but there is a place for the testimony of individuals who have had the experience, the absolutely horrendous experience that you have recounted on behalf of your constituent convener. It is important that those messages are shared. I think that what is very clear is that the issues of logistics in accessing the vaccination programme have been well thought through because the vaccination programme has been an enormous undertaking and it has delivered very significant results and it has been the cause, and one of the reasons is that the vaccination programme has been delivered within local communities, maximising local access, but we must constantly, and then, grave in his team, are doing this, constantly revisit the practicalities and the logistics of making it possible and plausible for people to access the programme. Last, I would say that, at the heart of the example that you recited there, Angela was unable to take up her appointment because another commitment to her work intervened. What I would say is that there should be no individual in the country that feels that they will get anything other than a warm welcome from a vaccination centre to turn up to get even a first dose at this stage. There are people turning up and getting first doses as we speak, so we are constantly eroding that number of people who have not yet had started off on the vaccination journey, but I do hope that the example that you have cited helps in that respect. I move on to questions from other members now. I bring Ian Murdoff-Rezart, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the cabinet secretary and to colleagues. There are a couple of different issues that I would like to touch on this morning. Can I start by picking up, cabinet secretary, what you said in your introduction about the latest study that has just come out from Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities on the impact of Omicron? There is also a lot of media coverage around a similar study from Imperial College London that comes to the same conclusions, which is that Omicron seems to deliver a much lower level of hospitalisation than Delta. I appreciate that this is all based on very limited data in a short space of time, but nevertheless is very encouraging news. On the other hand, there must be a risk that members of the public, seeing those headlines, start to relax and let down their guard, which could end up with more serious consequences. I am interested in getting your view on that and specifically understanding how the new studies that are emerging will feed into decision making in the course of the coming week about any new restrictions that might be brought in post the Christmas period. I think that this is a very important question and we have to proceed in the consideration of these issues within Omicron. I listened last night to Professor Aziz Sheik, who is one of the principal offer of the University of Edinburgh study, and I listened again to Professor Sheik on the radio this morning. Professor Sheik is absolutely correct that the study indicates that, at this early stage, it appears that Omicron may result in a lower proportion of hospitalisation. Professor Sheik was at length to press the point that, if it is a point that ministers have made and other clinicians have made, that even if there is a lower proportion of hospitalisation, if that lower level of hospitalisation is of a much larger number of cases, which is apparent with Omicron, because the variant is spreading like wildfire through the country, then that will pose serious pressures on the national health service. When Professor Sheik asked what steps should we take in the light of the study, he essentially said that we should roll out the booster vaccination programme and we should be limiting our social interaction. That is precisely what the Scottish Government is doing. We are rolling out the vaccination booster programme and we are encouraging people, in some cases requiring people, to reduce their social interaction. That appears to me to be the proportionate and prudential approach to take at this stage. In relation to the last part of Mr Fraser's question, how should this affect decision making in due course? Obviously, the Government will look with care at studies of this type and will consider how this affects the judgment that I have rehearsed with the committee on a number of occasions before. What are the proportionate steps that we should take to deal with the significance of Omicron? The dilemma that ministers face is that, for example, if we do not take early enough action to suppress the circulation of the virus within our society, we will find that we have a problem that is too big to arrest and that it will be all too late and our health service will be overwhelmed. The ministers in the Scottish Government have constantly taken the attitude and the view that we need to intervene early to try to take preventative action to avoid a situation running away from us. Obviously, we need to make a careful judgment about how long the restrictions that we have set out to come into effect on 26 and 27 December need to be in place to ensure that we are taking sufficient action to suppress this variant of the virus. Lastly, ministers are always cognisant of the fact that we have got to take proportionate decisions in relation to the state of the pandemic, and that study will be one factor that is added into that judgment. Thank you, Mr Swinney. It is a very comprehensive answer. I am sure that there will be other colleagues on the committee who want to pursue some of those issues. In view of the time available, I am keen to ask you a question about another matter, which is the issue of business support. We have seen an announcement this week from the Scottish Government specifically about support for the hospitality sector. I know that we welcome the businesses there who have been hard-picked by the cancellations. Can I seek clarity on the other business sectors that you are proposing to and when we will hear more about what is available for them? There is a wider question about business support. The total that we have available is £375 million, £200 million of which has come from the Scottish Government funds, £175 million from the United Kingdom Government. Some initial allocations have been made in relation to hospitality that the finance secretary has approved. The finance secretary is currently considering those questions and early announcements will be made as soon as is possible. Obviously, there is a great deal of dialogue going on with individual sectors to ensure that those judgments are the best informed they can be. That dialogue is under way at the present moment and the decisions will be announced at the earliest opportunity. I cannot be specific about that time scale at this stage, but the finance secretary will update Parliament accordingly. I have been approached by a number of accommodation providers, people running guest houses and bed and breakfasts that do not qualify for support under the heading of hospitality, but have nevertheless seen a major impact on their business with cancellations. People who are coming to attend various events, concerts, football matches and people who are coming to Hogmanay events have all now been cancelled. People therefore are cancelling their trips and that is a sector that has therefore seen a major hit. Are you looking at support for accommodation providers? Is that part of the mix in terms of sectors that might be eligible for assistance? The finance secretary is engaging in dialogue with various sectors around the question. As I said in my previous answer, she will make an announcement in due course. I think that what I have to say is a candid reflection that we are not going to be able to support anybody who is affected by the restrictions that are having to be put in place. We have made significant steps within our own resources to ensure that we are able to put some funding in place. The Government has been explicit that it would help us enormously if there was a targeted extension of the furlough scheme from the United Kingdom Government because of the challenges that we face. That has not been forthcoming so far, although I welcome the funding support that has come from the United Kingdom Government, but I think that we would be in a better position to be able to respond had we had access to a broader range of options, some of which would have included furlough. If that had been available, the resources that we have at our disposal or from our resources would be deployed to tackle other challenges and other priorities. However, as I said, the finance secretary will make an announcement on that in due course. I have one final question for Clarity. I, along with many others, am sure have visitors contacting me every day. Can you give us any indication when we might get confirmation of that from the finance secretary? Those issues have been actively considered just now, and the finance secretary will update Parliament and the wider public at the earliest possible opportunity. Can I please bring in Alex Rowley? Can I begin by asking the First Minister where the Government's thinking is in terms of self-isolation. I note that England has introduced a shorter period of self-isolation to lateral flow tests. That is an issue that has been treated with significant care. At the core of the challenge that we face in relation to the whole of Covid, but especially because of Omicron, is that we have a necessity to break the chains of transmission. That is critical. There is nothing new, and there has been a consistent challenge throughout Covid. Self-isolation is a critical element in that process. It is especially critical in relation to Omicron because of the degree to which the transmissibility of Omicron. That puts an added emphasis on making sure that our self-isolation arrangements are appropriate. It follows from that that if we do not apply the right self-isolation approach, we run the risk of enabling people to be released from self-isolation who potentially may still be able to transmit the virus, and that defeats the purpose of self-isolation. A fine judgment has to be applied on that question. Obviously, there is a lot of anxiety in the business community, for example, about the availability of key workers. We have, in the arrangements that we have in place, exemptions for critical workers, and that process is managed very efficiently and very carefully within the Government to make sure that, where it can be justified, individuals can be released from self-isolation to make a contribution to the delivery of key workers within our society. That exemption exists, so some of that business anxiety is addressed by some of the measures that we have in place. Lastly, I would say to Mr Rowley that the Government is considering the issues that are raised by the change in policy approach adopted by the United Kingdom Government, but the issues that I raised at the very beginning of my answer are the issues that we will be considering carefully in that process. I do not know if Professor Leitch may want to add a clinical perspective to the answer that I have given. Thank you, First Minister. You have covered it very well. This is all about risk and moment in the pandemic, and the decision makers have produced, at some level, on that clinical advice where they draw that particular line. Let us remember what was announced in England yesterday. It was not a blanket seven days for everybody. You have to be fully vaccinated. You have to take a test on day six and 24 hours later on day seven. You have to both be negative and you have to be symptom-free. That is not a blanket release on day seven. It is quite a limited release on day seven. It does make a difference to other harms, economic and social harms, because it is allowing some people to go home for Christmas who were not expecting to do so. We are looking at it very carefully. We spoke to the health secretary yesterday about it, and we will give the advice that we think is based on the science. Then Mr Yousaf and Mr Swinney and others will make that final decision. Thank you. We welcome back to the question, but it would be useful if there are exemptions in place, some kind of detail how that actually works. I see a press release for Jackie Baillie last night making the point that it is about the pressure, particularly on our key front-line services, health and social care, so any updates on that would be appreciated. I will turn quickly. I have a couple of other points. The First Minister in her announcement, she was asked a question by Jackie Dunbar, and I am sure that it is a question certainly one that I had the last time a lot, was in terms of supporting employees who believe that they should be working for home, were working for home the last time, and encouraged employers to do so. The First Minister, in her answer, obviously said trade unions for people who are members of trade unions, but she also highlighted Scottish hazards who I would say have been excellent throughout, and I have sent quite a number of referrals their way, where people have been looking for advice and support. I will quickly ask the First Minister to make sure that organisations such as Scottish hazards are continuing to be funded and are getting funded to be able to meet the increase in demand that has been placed on them. I certainly welcome the contribution that the Scottish hazards and other organisations have made to this process and obviously the contribution of trade unions. As Mr Rowley will know, the Government has placed an obligation on business to take account of the requirements that we are making in relation to observing guidance that the Government is publishing and the guidance that the Government cannot declare that where individuals can be working from home, they should be working from home, that is part of reducing the social interaction that is taking place within our society, and if we reduce that social interaction. I think that there is reasonable evidence that that is happening and that we will contribute towards breaking the chains of transmission that are involved. I am not familiar with any issues about the funding of Scottish hazards, but I will look at that because they do make an important contribution. Lastly, convener, if I could perhaps go back to the previous answer to Mr Rowley. If it would help, I would be happy to write to the committee about the details of the exemption process that is in place. There are some wider exemptions from the self-isolation obligations that can be pursued. Although they are not, as Professor Leitch said in his response to Mr Rowley, they are not exemptions without obligations. There are quite onerous requirements that individuals have to go through, but there are exemptions and ultimately organisations can make representations to ministers. I personally have approved a number of exemptions for individual companies who, without those exemptions, would not be able to provide critical services within the community. Ministers are responding to those requests that have been made by companies and responding to turning those around very swiftly. I will write to the committee on that point. I will bring in Professor Jason Leitch. Professor Leitch was only brief to add to that point from Mr Rowley. I have not seen Ms Bailey's press release, but just to confirm that there is a blanket test and release system for all health and social care workers, not without risk and without obligation, but health and social care workers, if they are in a household with a positive case, can be released on a negative PCR test. Then there are further obligations about caution and everything else that they have to do, as well as the critical national infrastructure system, which the Deputy First Minister has just outlined to you right to the committee. I will bring you back in, Mr Rowley, but it would be helpful if we could have clarification on the self-isolation before we finalise the bill report. Will that be available to the committee before 3 January? In relation to the question of any change to the self-isolation position, we will endeavour to do that. I cannot give a commitment that that will be the case, but having heard you, that will be reflected on within Government. If there is clarity that can be offered, we will offer it within that time scheme. I will bring Alex Rowley back in place. That would be useful for that information. I am grateful to Mr Swinney for agreeing to check the Scottish hazards funding. I turn to my third final point, which is about vaccination. There are a couple of points that I want to make here. First, we have seen in one European country others talking about compulsory vaccination. I am certain that none of us on this call would advocate that. However, do we need to be doing more? The evidence that we took a few weeks ago—for example, there were representatives from the Polish community that were making the point that, back in Poland, there is a reluctance to take up vaccination. Indeed, I think that they are when the countries are looking at compulsory vaccination. However, do we need to focus, and as the Government has any plans to focus more specifically on those areas that have a much lower take-up? For example, one suggestion was that the Government works with those communities and includes people from those communities in the vaccination teams. If you could say something about that. The other point that I was going to ask was that, up until this latest variant came along, we thought that we were doing really good. We thought that we were making brilliant progress, and that it was all about looking to recovery. We have seen how quickly a new variant—this virus—can completely throw us off-kilter and set us back and do real damage. The question that people have continually said over the past year is that we are nobody's safety or everyone's safety. What can the influence that the Scottish Government has and what can the influence that the Scottish Government brings to bear to get that vaccine roll-out happening to encourage the UK Government to encourage Governments all over the world? What is clear is that we could do everything that we are doing now and the sacrifices that everybody is making. A new variant can emerge in some country where there is no vaccination and we are back to square one. It is absolutely in our interest, but I am not sure, as a devolved administration, how much influence do we actually have? Two very important questions from Mr Rowley. On the hesitancy that there is within individual communities, a great deal of work has been done to tailor communication into those communities with trusted voices speaking about the vaccination programme in those communities. Mr Rowley raises the Polish community. We are very grateful to members of the representatives of the Catholic Church who have been very active in promoting the message around vaccination and about the importance of vaccination. That message has been relayed strongly and powerfully by the Catholic community in Scotland and by the members of the Polish community. I would be absolutely staggered if there were not members of the Polish community active involved in the vaccination programme. Members of the Polish community are very valued and significant members of the community that I represent and are very much involved in the delivery of public services in our communities. Various other steps have been taken within the Black minority ethnic communities to increase take-up with trusted voices being involved in that communication. Having said all of that, I have to accept that we must continue to do more to reach those levels of trust and confidence that will enable people to take up the vaccination. To go back to where the convener started today with the constituency example that she raised from her constituent Angela, the consequences of not-so-doing for individuals can be very acute and very dangerous. The Government will constantly revisit the importance of ensuring that we get those messages correct to those communities. We are very grateful to trusted voices in those communities that have worked with us on that message. I give the committee the assurance that we will continue to do that. On the second point that Mr Rowley raises and again is a very important question and fundamentally he is correct. We live in a global society. The travel patterns of the world are such. I can remember when Omicron first reared its head in a province in South Africa. It did not take long before a case emerged in Hong Kong and then cases emerged in Scotland and in the rest of the United Kingdom. That is the world that we live in nowadays. 100 years ago, a major excursion for people in Cwbrangas, near where I live, would be to go to Blair Gallery, which is a total of five miles away. The world has changed, initially, since then. As a consequence, the ability of virus to spread is colossal unless we get comprehensive vaccination solution in place that provides much greater protection for all of us. The Scottish Government has made representations to the United Kingdom Government, and we will continue to do so, so that the UK plays an important and influential role in the international discussions about vaccine equity. It also makes a contribution to that process. Mr Rowley is fundamentally correct. We can have as effective a booster programme as we like, but we still remain vulnerable to the development of a new variant, which could undermine the very strong efforts that we are making to keep our population safe. If I could start in the realm of sport, and I was on Twitter last night, which may or may not be a good idea, however, there were some useful points that came up. One was around the question of why the actual number of 500 outside events and 200 inside events has been chosen, and why it is such a blanket. For the larger clubs, range of Celtic Aberdeenibs hearts, 500 or 1,000 does not really matter too much, and, effectively, it is nothing. However, for some of the smaller clubs, such as Clyde and Airdrie, 500 to 1,000 is a big jump, and it would either mean that they could have their whole crowd in or that it would have to be very limited. For those who know their football stadiums, Airdrie and Clyde have quite modern, spread-out stadiums where you could easily get 1,000 people in. Albin Rovers cannot hardly get 500 in. The question is why the exact number of 500 is not varied between different sizes of the stadium and the 200 for the inside. The key point is that we have to take decisions based on making sure that such judgments are effective. If, for example, we have a multiple range of options about outside venues, let us, for example, take the model that the nation has put to me of a variation reflecting stadium size and stadium facility, we will lose clarity of message, which is a rather blunt one, and I made no apology for it being so blunt that we need to quite simply reduce the degree to which people are interacting. A total of 500 as a maximum for outdoor events sends a very clear signal to people in the country that we have to reduce that interaction. For example, a crowd of 500 at a rangers game compared to a crowd of 50,000, which would normally be of that order, makes a very clear significant point that we have to reduce dramatically the level of social interaction if we want to interrupt the circulation of Omicron. There is a simple clarity that is necessary in that respect. The second point is that we have to make judgments that will be effective in actually practically stopping or reducing the circulation of the virus. That is about recognising that there will be limitations on the degree to which venues can accommodate individuals because of the necessity to make sure that we have practical arrangements in place to stop the circulation of the virus. Those are the reasoning for it. As for the specific numbers, there is no perfect science here, other than the fact that I would come back to my first point, which is that we have to take clear and understandable decisions that are set within the policy choices that we make, which are about reducing the social interaction between individuals. Okay. If I can just follow up slightly on that. Previously, we had no crowds at all at sports events, including footballs. I am not arguing for that, but I just wonder why that logic does not stop crowds altogether. That would be an option, but the Government is buying here as pragmatic as we possibly can be about the implications of our decisions. Nobody wants to take those decisions. I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in those decisions, but we are trying to strike a balance that enables people to, to some extent, continue to enjoy particular events, albeit with their limited crowds in attendance, but at the same time to take the effective action that is necessary to suppress the circulation of the virus. That is the balance judgment that the Government is trying to do. Okay, thanks for that. I accept that. I am still kind of on the sports theme on the question of compensation. Our murder phraser did press you and you were clear that decisions will be made fairly soon and will get an announcement. I mean, I just wonder if you could maybe say that you would not rule out support for, say, a sports organisation in my constituency like Glasgow Rocks basketball. I have to say that I personally had bought tickets for next Wednesday and they are now not going to have any crowds of whatsoever. That puts them in a particularly difficult position because they are competing with English teams that are allowed large crowds. Likes of them, likes of the carnival at, say, Glasgow and Glasgow, likes of taxi drivers who are all losing out, in some cases, linked to events. Are they, at least, in the running for getting some kind of compensation? I think that it is probably best—I appreciate the committee's desire for clarity on this point, but I think that it is probably best if I simply say—I do not actually think that I have got much to add to what I said to Mr Fraser earlier on—that the Government is considering a range of options. The finance secretary is giving that her attention just now. I think that it would be inappropriate for me to start defining what should or should not be the areas that are looked at beyond the decisions that have been announced already. I hear the points that Mr Mason is making, and I know that the finance secretary will be receiving representations from a very broad range of sectors that have been affected. I think that I have to reiterate my point that I made to Mr Fraser, that it is going to be impossible for us to support every sector that is affected by the latest changes. That is why we have asked the United Kingdom Government to engage substantively in putting in place a set of measures that would be sufficient to support those sectors, and I reiterate that call to be. The question of drugs for treating Covid—I saw some coverage in the media that the UK is buying two different kinds of drugs—I do not know what they are. I wonder where we are with that. Are those drugs and treatments still being developed? Some people say to me, why bother getting the vaccine if we can get a drug later on? I tend to say that prevention is better than cure, but that is perhaps a slightly simplistic answer. I wonder if you can give us any update on whether that is Professor Leitch as to where we are with drugs and treatment. I had a friend with Long Covid who said that when they got their jag, they improved, they felt. That is just anecdotal, but I wonder if there is any evidence for that. I will bring Professor Leitch in on some of the detail of the question, but I would encourage Mr Mason to continue with the prevention as opposed to cure advice. That is absolutely solid advice. Prevention by getting the vaccination is much better than hoping that you can be rescued by a cure. We know that the vaccination is very effective at reducing the severity of the virus. That has been true up until now with Delta. The booster is crucial in that process in relation to Omicron, where some of the earlier vaccines are not as robust as they have been. Prevention is absolutely central to the advice that we should be issuing. The vaccination is absolutely correct to maintain that position. On the drugs that are available, there are two drug treatments that are available. If my memory serves me right, one of them is in a test pilot. Professor Leitch will give us the proper terminology for that. It is important for me to stress at this stage. That comes again back to the prevention versus cure point. Prevention is available to a very large proportion of our population. All over 18s have access to the—to varying degrees, all over 12s have access to a vaccination programme, as we speak. A drug will be available in the short term to a very small proportion of the population, particularly if it is in a pilot access. I would not have people holding out hope at an early stage for a drug intervention. Taking part in the vaccination programme is a much more effective intervention for individuals to make. I invite Professor Leitch to add to my comments. That is good news, Mr Mason, but let us put it in perspective. It is becoming increasingly apparent as time passes that your principal risk in serious outcomes from Covid is to do with your immunity. Either your baseline immunity because you have had a transplant or you have some other immunosuppression disease or you are unvaccinated. That is the principal risk factor or you are very elderly where your immune system is beginning to fail. That fits. We are discovering that a lot of the risk factors that we thought early on might cause more severe disease are proving not to be that big a deal. It is age and immunity and the combination of those two things are the people who are suffering. Therefore, if vaccination does not protect you as much if you are 94 or if you have had a heart transplant, then those drugs are really useful. They have been developed at breakneck speed, they are safe, they are good, and we have procured them on a UK basis. There has been excellent co-operation across the four UK countries, and we will use them for those who need them. Mr Swinney is absolutely right. It is on the periphery of the population's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The population response remains vaccination, home testing and following the guidance. However, if you end up in hospital, particularly if you are immunocompromised, those antivirals will absolutely be part of your treatment going forward. More will come, drug companies all over the world are working on this, because it is crucial. Antivirals traditionally have not been very good, frankly, unlike antibiotics, which have revolutionised medicine in the past 100 years. Antivirals are very difficult to make and to make work, so they are considerably better. We are encouraged by early results, but they are for a particular portion of the sick who progress from medium disease to serious disease and death, and that is principally the immunocompromised. If I may just have one final, hopefully brief question. Again, there has been media coverage. I think that the number of lateral flow tests being used is increasing, and that sounds like good news. However, there was also coverage that people using check-in apps—test and protect and so on—is decreasing. I have noticed that in Parliament, because people are meant to check-in for the coffee bar, and I do not think that so many are. Is the check-in side of things still important? It is absolutely vital, convener. We reiterated that point in the First Minister's statement on Tuesday. We reiterated that in the obligations that we are placing on businesses and venues to ensure that the check-in arrangements are visible and complied with, and that businesses are operating, having taken account of what the wording is to have regard to, to ensure that that is undertaken. The whole check-in arrangement is crucial to enable us to interrupt the transmission of the virus. It is encouraging news that more lateral flow tests are being used. It is such a straightforward process, and it is so crucial in giving people—I know of numerous cases where people have frankly stumbled across the fact that they are Covid-positive by doing regular lateral flow tests, having absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, and being able to change their behaviour and actions as a consequence of undertaking that lateral flow test. That is a significant strengthening of our ability to resist the challenges that we face. I am always struck by the Covid recovery committee. It seems to me that, week on week, we struggle to get to that particular idea of recovery as events overtake us. I will try again to look ahead. I asked the question about what recovery looks like. We seem to be on a loop here. If we go right to the very start of this, we were in isolation, then along came vaccination, and then along came the booster. We are back into restrictions again. Are we now considering that this is a cycle that might be indefinite? I remember asking Professor Leitch a couple of months ago when he thought that we would get back to some kind of normality. Back then—this is no criticism, I may say—the thought was that, from Professor Leitch, it would be the spring for the United Kingdom in up to five years for the world, and we now know that that is not the case. What recovery from the virus looks like? Are we just going to have to get to a point where we are living with it indefinitely? I can ask Professor Leitch if I could. It is a great question, Mr Whittle. The WHO has given a series of press conferences this week where the tone has changed in response to a previous question from the committee about global vaccination and global response. It has never been one bound in your free not to be flippant, but it was never going to be that. Pandemics last a long time traditionally. This is a unique pandemic, as they all are, because it comes at a moment in time, as Mr Swinney has already described, where travel is more available but also global science is more available. Therefore, there are differences between this one and the 1918 one around the availability of vaccination, the availability of drugs, etc. I still have hope that spring will look very different to winter across the UK and Western Europe. Depending on what happens to the virus, which is the key unknown, we will then go into 2022, perhaps in a more open way. If I take you back four weeks, Scotland was open. Everything was open. We were still wearing face coverings, we were still testing and we were vaccinating. However, everything was open and society was returning. I had been for dinner more than I had been for dinner in the previous two years. I had theatre booked, etc., as did many in the country. What has happened is that the fourth globally transmissible variant has won the race again, and it is now in half of the world's countries almost. What will happen next is crucial. Omicron is not the end, there will be more. It will depend, as we have touched on this morning, if Omicron is a little bit less severe, will Sigma, Mu, whatever they decide to call the next one, be less severe again. If that continues to happen and the optimistic virologists think that it might, then 2022 looks very different to 2021. However, that is a global problem, not a Scottish problem, and we have to bear in mind, as the WHO said yesterday, that you cannot boost your way out of a global pandemic. You have to vaccinate the world and you have to continue protections around the world until you manage to do that. The virus does its thing, and we manage, depending on what we get. Professor Leitch has given the clinical and epidemiological underpinning of that, but let me give the policy perspective, because Mr Whittle is absolutely correct in having the aspiration to be able to secure a recovery from Covid. While the Government proceeded to formulate after consultation in the summer of the Covid recovery strategy, which was published on 5 October, it is the subject of implementation. Despite the challenges that we face with Omicron, various steps since 5 October have been taken to implement the Covid recovery strategy, focused, as colleagues will know, on ensuring that we tackle the inequalities that existed before Covid that became more severe during Covid, and, principally, to focus on eradicating child poverty. The joint programme board that is leading the implementation of the recovery strategy, which is jointly chaired by the President of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and by me, has now met. It has formulated its approach to developing and delivering the programme, and that will now become an on-going theme. Notwithstanding the fact that we have had this three-week aberration where we have had to focus on Omicron, we obviously have restrictions that are coming with us a few weeks to come. I assure Mr Whittle that there is on-going sustainability under way to implement the Covid recovery strategy, while we continue to deal with a pandemic that has a different character, because Professor Leitch is absolutely right. Just a few weeks ago, Scotland was opening. We were wearing face coverings, we were watching what we were doing, and there is nothing wrong with that. We were setting measures to have in place, but there is also a stance that has been taken to implement the Covid recovery strategy. Thank you very much. It is really helpful. Given that I am a cup-half-full kind of guy, I am very much hopeful that as we go forward through the next few months, we will get to a much better place. As you have highlighted, the variant is of a different character, and there is nothing to guarantee that that will happen again in the future. A couple of questions pop out of that. The first one is about finance. There has been debate on finance, Mr Swinney, and I do not want to get into that. My concern is that, if we continue on this cycle, it is an inevitability that finance is going to become more and more and more restrictive, which will then give us less and less options of how we respond to another variant or another as we go on. How are we modelling that? How is the Scottish Government and working with others to model globally how we are going to deal with that? That gets to the number of the challenges that exist around the public finance. I appreciate that I am not being partisan in the comments that I am making. It is just a simple reflection of reality. If the Scottish Government wants to allocate money to compensate businesses for the implications of Covid restrictions, we have to take that money from somewhere else that is currently allocated to in the Scottish budget. We have to shift that money around, and we have taken a decision that will shift around £200 million into the purposes of supporting the restrictions funding that we have for the forthcoming period. That will be uncomfortable, believe you me. It is uncomfortable for us to wrestle with that. We do that because we are in a fixed-budget environment. The UK Government is able to borrow. It can borrow in the money markets, it can expand the money that is available and it can redeploy that. That is why we say to the UK Government that, in an endeavour to meet the challenges of today, let us allocate money that we can pay back over a period of number of years. The UK Government is responding with £1 billion in funding, and it is not fond of the scale that I think would be commensurate with the challenges that we face. However, we have to take decisions in the short term to try to support individuals and organisations when they face those challenges. That is what the Scottish Government has opted to do in our fixed budget and what I urge the UK Government to do in the flexibilities that it has available to them. I appreciate what you are saying. I am more concerned that, as that goes on, in a global financial market, the squeeze on global finances is going to almost—if, for example, another one will come along—a glow is going to squeeze us to a point where how the globally respond to this is going to be a limit. That is really where I was getting at. I think that that takes you back to the questions that Mr Rowley put to me earlier on in the session. It is a global pandemic. We can do a lot of solutions here. Of course we can, and we will do that. However, the solutions lie across the globe. We have to have global resilience. If we want to have an interconnected world as we have, if we want to be able to move people and goods around the world and for individuals to be able to do that, there has to be global resilience to enable that to be the case. Therefore, the type of programmes that Mr Rowley was talking about—global vaccination programmes—are important to provide resilience so that we can have some ability to be confident that the obstacles that we have in our way are sufficiently robust to protect us from a variant that can emerge from a jurisdiction on the other side of the planet. It can be with us in a matter of days. That is what has happened here. A variant that is emerging in one part of the world is just spread like wildfire. The second part of the question that I was going to ask about, if the current cycle continues in any way, we all understand the weariness of dealing with the pandemic. The behavioural response to restrictions has already been—one of my colleagues has already talked about—the check-in apps for track and trace. There are reports that say that there is less of that happening. I do not know whether you are aware of reports of fans chanting at a football match about refusing boosters ahead of the event restrictions. I think that the concern here is the sort of disaffection, especially among the young people. Is there a recognition of that and how do we combat that and ensure that there is a high level of compliance continued and maintained as we get more weary with this? I think that there is a mixed picture on that. I recognise the point that John Mason put to me when he was on about some of the check-in procedures that may not be followed as assiduously. I hear and I see some anecdotal evidence about people not wearing face coverings where they should be doing so. I do not spend the fact of spending absolutely none of my time in the retail environment, to be honest. I do not really get near the shops very often, but I hear anecdotal reports about face coverings and the challenges that staff face about ensuring that they are applied. Having said that, I think that, generally, since the Scottish Government, the First Minister, said to people a week past Tuesday, I need you to reduce your social interaction because of Omicron, I think that people have generally done that. I think that there is pretty tangible evidence of that being the case. It has manifest itself as quite a significant implication for the hospitality sector, because lots of people have said, look, we cannot go out to that Christmas lunch that we thought we would be going out for, or we cannot go out to that event. People have taken those decisions. It has had implications for others and for business sectors. I acknowledge that, but I think that people have taken it forward. I think that the evidence about latter flow test uptake and utilisation is very encouraging. I think that among all that, it is a mixed picture, but I think that we should be optimistic that members of the public recognise the seriousness of the situation that we face and are responding accordingly. Thank you. That is me finished, convener. Thank you, Mr Whittle. Jim Fairlie, would you like to come in? Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, Mr Swinney and his team. Like Mr Whittle, I am always considering the Covid recovery element of our committee, and I do hope that my glass is half full as well. However, I want to look at some of the financial implications of where we are right now. Mr Swinney, I wonder whether it would be possible for you to give us a kind of a breakdown of how we have got to the £375 million in total, because it is quite often seen on social media and in conversations. Figures get bounced about all over the place and, oh yeah, but that did not matter, because then that money came in. Could you give us a brief outline of how we have gotten to a £375 million total fund? Essentially, the United Kingdom Government has made three announcements on the recent period on Covid funding. The first was to confirm that the Scottish Government will be receiving £220 million in consequential funding from the UK Government. That was a confirmation of allocations that we expected. It was not complete because we had expected to receive £265 million, so we got £220 million confirmed out of an expectation of £265 million, which left us 45 million short. Last weekend, the UK Government confirmed that it was adding £220 million to that. So, when you take off the £45 million, you end up with £175 million of what I would call unanticipated funding to the Scottish Government for Covid purposes. We have allocated that to the fund that I have talked about. The Scottish Government, in two individual tranches, has identified from within our own resources two blocks of £100 million that we are allocating to business support, and we are also allocating £100 million to boost the funding that is available for a self-isolation support grant because of the demand for that grant. In terms of business support, there are £375 million available, £200 million that has come from within the fixed budget of the Scottish Government, £175 million from the United Kingdom Government, and we have £100 million extra added to the self-isolation support grant. I have had cause over the past two weeks to be in two cities driving through those cities, particularly in the west end of Glasgow, and the number of hospitality businesses is stark if you start to look for it. My guess is that the £375 million in total is a drop in the ocean of what would be needed in order to give any kind of compensation to those multitude of businesses right across the country who are in their prime money-taking season. How much does the Scottish Government know it would actually take to properly keep those businesses supported over the next three weeks and stop any of them from going to the wall? That is a very difficult question to answer because there are a huge number of variables in answering that question. The first of which is the question of sustainability and survivability, because the purpose of our interventions so far has been to essentially help businesses to get through to the other side of Covid. At the various stages of the pandemic, there have been periods in which businesses have been closed, or they have been restricted, or they have been able to fully trade. In the process of those different periods, financial support has been in place to the extent that, when businesses have been able to fully operate, no financial support has been available because they have been able to trade in the marketplace, as we would expect. The question of survivability will vary from business to business depending on their trading environment. The second point is about some businesses who will still be able to operate to some extent during this period and have been able to do so over recent weeks, albeit that they might not have been able to realise the revenues that they might have hoped for in this period. There is a difference between what one might have hoped for and what one needs to get to the other side of this particular period. For those reasons, it is difficult for the Government to come to a definitive conclusion on that estimate. What I would assure Mr Fairlie about is that the Scottish Government has gone through an exercise of looking in a very challenging way at what is the amount of money we can make available to help people in this context. That exercise has involved us looking at the remaining public expenditure between now and the end of the financial year. As members of the committee will be familiar, a large proportion of the Government's expenditure once set in a budget is very firmly committed. We have a health service to run, which accounts for the largest single element of the Scottish Government's budget, of the order of 40 per cent of the budget. We have a large part of the budget locked into the running of the health service. A large part of the budget is locked into the running of other public services in relation to schools, care facilities and a variety of other items. To the degree of manoeuvrability and flexibility that exists in a fixed budget is very, very long. Therefore, £200 million for business support and £100 million for self-isolation support that the Government has found will cause us discomfort. That is what the finance secretary has looked at and is managing at the present moment. I will segue perfectly into my next question. Having run a business, I always want to know what is coming down the line. You may not be in a position to answer this question right now. The Scottish Government has found £200 million from a fixed budget. Who is going to lose out? That is about us managing the public finances to ensure that we minimise negative outcomes on individuals. We are looking at the time in the programmes, the times in which we authorise and approve financial commitments to give us as much flexibility. Every single bit of flexibility that we have is always underspend in a financial year. There must be a fixed budget that has to be underspend when you run the risk of breaching your budget ceiling. The Scottish Government has never breached its budget ceiling. 16 years of unqualified opinions from the Auditor General are a demonstration of our financial competence, so you have to run an underspend if you want to deliver an unqualified audit opinion. There will be underspends if we have to make sure that those underspends happen to deal with the expenditure that we are facing. It is safe to conclude that there are going to be some difficult decisions further down the line. Can I just go and change subjects now slightly? Last week, I had mentioned the fact that my father had gone into hospital with Covid. I can very happily say that he is now out of hospital, but he is still considerably debilitated with delirium. My dad had a heart issue, he had a double-jag, and he missed his booster. When he was in hospital, he was given the viral drug, which was effectively told that that would save his life. It has done it, but it has not left him without problems. I am making that point in the committee just to highlight the points that we made earlier in this session about getting the message out about individual circumstances. It was mentioned last week in the BBC about my father not being able to get a care package. We have now managed to get him out through other means, and he is making a recovery. However, that is seven weeks in which, A, we did not know if he was going to live, and B, he is now left with issues that we are still going to have to work through. I think that that is a point that needs to be made. I have time for one more question, convener. Just a quick one. Okay. Message confusion is slightly concerning me. If we have home working, as Alec Riley talked about, should it be a legal requirement and should there be consequences for employers who are not allowing people to work from home? First of all, convener, I am pleased to hear that Mr Fairle's senior is making the recovery fairly as a man, for whom I have the greatest respect in regard and have for and known him for a very large part of my life, so I wish him well and I am glad to hear his home. In relation to Mr Fairle's second point, the ability to exercise those powers would strike me as being out with the competence of the Scottish Government would be my initial reaction, because it would be us essentially intervening in areas of policy around corporate activities over which we do not have competence. That is my first initial reaction. However, what the Scottish Government has done is giving the clearest possible signals, encouragement and motivation to businesses to enable staff to work from home. That is for two reasons. First, the more people work from home, the more we reduce social interaction and reduce the ability for the virus to spread. Secondly, it enables us to ensure the continued operation of business models, albeit in a different format, which changes the on-going performance of the Scottish economy. We have tried to maintain a working environment as much as possible, albeit in a different fashion, to how many of us have worked in the past, but to enable us to sustain economic activity within our society and to do that as effectively and sustainably as we possibly can. I think that it is probably for Professor Leitch, but the booster gives us the protection that we need, and that has been shown, but I cannot help but to note that Israel has now introduced a fourth job, as a second booster. Is that something that is permanently under review? What progress is being made in considering if and when more vulnerable people may need another booster, but also going into the new year, will we need more vaccinations next year? Israel has authorized a fourth dose, not implemented clinically a fourth dose, and the authorization has been for the vulnerable, the elderly and those who are immunosuppressed. They have not actually pressed the button on it yet. It is a timing thing. Israel was first. Israel did all the Pfizer trials, so they are ahead of the rest of the world, just before Chile and just before the United Kingdom, in terms of sequencing of who got vaccinated first. We absolutely keep that under review, the WHO on behalf of the world, the UK on behalf of all of us, to see what will be required. It is difficult to predict entirely because it looks as though the immunity dimmer switch gets turned up quite well by the booster dose. Some people, of course, the immunosuppressed have three primary doses and then a booster, so we have some people on their fourth dose inside Scotland. That dimmer switch has to stay up, and as soon as it begins to fade, we will know from trials, and then the joint committee will make decisions and give advice about what to do next. I would not at all be surprised if, into next year's spring-summer, we would be vaccinating the vulnerable again. I simply do not know if we will need to vaccinate the whole population again as quickly as that. It may be a little bit later. Most of the smart money is probably on do the vulnerable first and then do the rest of the population again, and then that might be an annual occurrence or even quicker than that, and the joint committee will decide that based on the trials. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item, and I would like to thank the First Minister and his officials for their evidence today. I now move on to the third agenda item, which is consideration of the motion on the made affirmative instrument that was considered during the previous agenda item. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSI before we take the motion? I could just say a few words about the order for the record. Following the four nations basis review of the international travel regulations, the public health number 13 instrument removed the temporary addition of the 11 countries on the red list from 4am on the 15th of December, as the rapid growth of Omicron across the world meant that it was appropriate to do so at this point. Technical amendments were also made to provide for children travelling to Scotland who are aged 11 and under to allow them to leave self-isolation if their accompanying adults day 2 test comes back negative. That does not change the position of where the adult's test is positive. Children here must remain in isolation. Where one adult in the travelling group or family is positive and where another is negative, the domestic isolation guidance would apply and household contacts of any person who tests positive are asked to isolate for 10 days. If a child under the age of 11 is arriving on a company, they are no longer required to self-isolate. Thank you, Deputy First Minister. I now invite you to move S6M-02630. Thank you. Does any member wish to speak on the motion before I put the question forward? If you could put an R in the chat function, please. I note that no member has indicated that they wish to speak, so I will now put the question on the motion. The question is that motion S6M-02630 be agreed to. Do all members agree? If you do not agree, please put it in the chat function. The committee will publish a report to the Parliament setting out our decision on the statutory instrument that is considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the Deputy First Minister. I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning. I wish everyone a very merry Christmas, keep safe and look out for each other. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning. I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave and to move the meeting into the private session.