Nicola Sturgeon tells Scots to work from home and ‘increase compliance’ and urges Boris to bolster restrictions across the UK

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said on Monday during a briefing that she is urging Scot to work from home and “increase compliance” as six new cases of Omicron where found in the country.

Sturgeon has also written to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to bolster restrictions across the UK, but we would see him kicking and screaming before that happens.

Speaking at a briefing, Sturgeon said, “What we do know at this stage confirms in my view that we should treat it seriously and we should continue to act on a precautionary basis at this stage.

“While we all hope the emerging understanding of it will reduce rather than increase our level of concern, there is no doubt this presents potentially the most challenging development in the course of the pandemic for quite some time.”

The First Minister also said it is unlikely, but not impossible the cases of the new variant are linked to the COP26 conference held earlier this month.

Sturgeon said, “We have no information right now that any of these cases are related to COP.

“If you consider the timelines of COP, it is not impossible, but it’s perhaps also not probable that there are connections to COP.”

Scotland’s deputy first minister John Swinney told the BBC, “We obviously have some travel history on some of the cases, I don’t have all of that detail available to me at this stage, but on some of the cases we are aware that there is no travel history involved.”

He added, “What that tells us is that there must be a degree of community transmission of this particular strain of the virus in the absence of a direct travel connection for some of the cases in the southern African area.

“So that obviously opens up further challenges for us in terms of interrupting the spread of this particular strain of the virus and that will be the focus of the contact tracing operation that is under way already.”