Health Secretary Humza Yousaf has insisted that Covid vaccine passports are the right way forward, saying the “benefits outweigh the concerns”.
Nicola Sturgeon yesterday announced plans to introduce vaccine certification for certain events and venues, including nightclubs, and they will be debated by parliament next week.
Speaking on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today, the health secretary said Scotland is now at a stage with Covid where the passports would be beneficial, given the surge in cases.
“Our circumstances have changed, our cases have increased 80% in the last week,” he said.
“One month ago our test positivity was 5% and it’s now over 11%, so now we’re at the stage where we think Covid vaccination certification, the benefits of that could outweigh the risks.”
Reassuring businesses
Mr Yousaf admitted he had some concerns around Covid passport, including quality issues and the situation for those digitally excluded, but feels reassured by the proposed plans.
Further, the vaccination certification scheme has been limited to very specific events and specific venues which is a “demonstration of concerns” from the government.
He added: “The benefits outweigh the concerns that still remain.
“We’re going to work with the industry quite intensively over the next week, in advance of that parliamentary debate, to give them as much reassurance as possible. It would have been premature to have discussions before we’d even announced our intentions.
“Nightclubs have consistently been deemed a high risk venue for very understandable reasons.
“The often lack of ventilation, and largely those who are attending nightclubs are among the younger cohort where the uptake of the vaccine is lower, and we also know that the behaviours exhibited within a nightclub in terms of close contact are also high risk.”
Hopeful that cases will decline
The health secretary, who was unable to attend parliament for the announcement on Tuesday after rupturing his achilles playing badminton, also said that it is important for businesses to continue implementing safety measures despite visitors being fully vaccinated.
“Even though it reduces your chance of hospitalisation quite significantly, you could still be hospitalised, so it is important to demonstrate caution, and that’s why it’s really important for us to have intense engagement with the industries.
“We have to make sure the industry have the appropriate verifier app, the NHS app, and some tweaks have to be made to that so it can read the QR code. It is important that we get a bit of a lead in time for business, and such a significant step should have parliamentary approval.
“We are bringing this forward because we don’t want to reimpose restrictions, we never have wanted to reimpose restrictions, but of course that is always an option that we have to consider, particularly if we the rise in cases we saw last week.
“The doubling of the cases last week was a significant concern, the early data from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is hopefully that the rate of increase is starting to slow down.
“That’s positive, I’m maybe grasping at straws, but that’s an important point to make.”
‘Difficult time ahead’
The decision to introduce a Covid passport comes following a significant surge in positive cases across the country with Ms Sturgeon stating that the government does not want to reimpose any restrictions as a way of combating this.
Jillian Evans, head of health intelligence at NHS Grampian, told the radio programme that rising case numbers “continue to be a worry”.
She said: “It may reduce as schools settle and as people go through their tests, we may see a drop in cases there, or it could just continue to bumble on at very high levels.
“I think this is a likely scenario, where we may see peaks and troughs as other things in society change, as universities return and as workplaces start to fill up again.
“I think we’re in for a continued, difficult time ahead.”
Reducing further transmission
Ms Evans also expressed that the introduction of a Covid passport at this point would hopefully help to minimise the risk of transmission.
She continued: “It’s a good place to start. It’s the least worse of other options, and it seems there isn’t an appetite to roll the clock back to more severe restrictions that affect our everyday lives.
“This is attempting to tackle those very high risk settings and events where the risk of exposure and transmission is higher.
“When you are in overcrowded, indoor events in particular, when you’ve got lots of people gathered together, often shouting or singing or close together, the risk is higher.”
“Vaccination doesn’t mean you’re 100% protected, but that’s not the point of this. This is to minimise risk, and I hope this will be for a short time.”
When it comes to the timing of introducing the vaccine certification, she said it would be “difficult” to navigate.
“I would start it soon, I know logistics will be tricky, I would argue that introducing it now can reduce a degree of risk, and what you do is prepare yourself to keep your services running.
“Preparation is really important , and from a public health perspective, doing it as soon as is practical may help to reduce further transmission.”