Nicola Sturgeon announced a ban on household visits starting today as the First Minister sets out a plan to get COVID-19 cases under control. But in England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged people to work from home where possible and closed pubs, bars and restaurants from 10pm. ITV presenter Piers Morgan hit out at the SNP’s leader “unhelpful” roadmap out of the crisis.
Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms Sturgeon said: “Our experiences are different but we’re all in it together and we will get through it.
“Previous generations have gone through even tougher things that lasted years. The second world war for example.
“The one thing we know is this virus will pass. We don’t know exactly when but it will pass.
“There will come a point when we will look back on it.”
Piers interjected: “One of my issues with it all, I don’t feel there is enough of a global effort with everyone coming together and I don’t feel there’s a message of consistency in the UK.
“I understand devolved governments and responsibility but is there an argument to say that given the scale of this pandemic and all the repercussions that it doesn’t really help to have England doing one thing, Scotland doing another.
“Is it unhelpful to people’s thought process that we’re all one thing and yet we’re not and it depends where you are.”
Ms Sturgeon continued: “I agree with you. I think globally there should be a more coordinated response.
“I think we should try and coordinate across the UK but ultimately I’m the first minister of Scotland and I can’t outsource my decision-making.”
She added: “I’ve made a judgment that we are again at a tipping point with COVID.
“I’m looking at data that alarms me, frankly, and if we don’t act now, urgently and decisively, then we might find COVID running out of control again.
“So the judgment I’ve made, and it’s not an easy one, is that if we take tough action now we might actually manage to be under these restrictions for a shorter period of time than we will end up being if we delay that action.
“So these are tough judgments but I think, given the loss of life we know that COVID can result in, the health damage that it does, we’ve got to be prepared at moments like this, people like me, to take tough decisions, and to be prepared to do things even if they’re unpopular, for the greater good.”
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Asked about the number of deaths in care homes, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “I’m sorry for every death that has occurred.”
She told the show: “These things will stay with me for the rest of my life, and the knowledge that decisions we took for the best of reasons, based on the information we had at the time… influenced all of these things – no leader worth their salt carries that lightly.
“I think if we can turn the clock back, there are things in many aspects of the handling of this pandemic, including in care homes, that we would undoubtedly do differently.
“We were dealing with a new virus, things like asymptomatic transmission we didn’t understand as well then as we do now and we’ve made a lot of changes along the way.
“And as we go into winter certainly a big preoccupation of mine and the Scottish Government is how do we protect people in care homes better perhaps than was done before.”
