The Scottish government is not planning to introduce any national restrictions on travel in the coming days, first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The news will be welcomed by school staff given the October holidays are due to start in many parts of the country on Friday. Schools in other parts of the country went on holiday at the end of last week, and some start at the end of next week.
However, Ms Sturgeon did reiterate her plea that people should avoid travel abroad and unnecessary domestic travel, and she said that local travel restrictions may yet be deemed necessary.
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New restrictions in response to rising numbers of coronavirus cases are still expected to be announced tomorrow. This afternoon, however, Ms Sturgeon outlined the measures that had already been ruled out in a bid to stop speculation about a so-called “circuit breaker” and what it might entail.
She said: “We are not proposing another lockdown at this stage, not even on a temporary basis.
“We are not going to ask you to stay inside your own homes in the way we did back in March. And while we have been asking people to think carefully about non-essential travel, particularly overseas…we are not about to impose travel restrictions on the whole of the country.
“We are not about to shut down the entire economy, we are not about to halt the remobilisation of the NHS.
“It is vital our National Health Service is there for non-Covid conditions as well as anything that we have to deal with in relation to Covid.
“And apart from the October holidays, which are already planned, we are not proposing to close schools either wholly or even partially.
“So I hope all of that gives people some reassurance.”
It had been reported that the Scottish government was considering introducing a so-called circuit breaker to coincide with the October holidays, which some had speculated would mean a return to a form of lockdown being imposed - but for a relatively short period of around two weeks to get transmission rates down.
Earlier today, the EIS teaching union published an email it had sent to education secretary and deputy first minister John Swinney, urging him to allow school staff the chance for a proper break over the October holidays “without undue confinement”.
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said that this term had been “the most stressful that members can remember” and that “workload levels are through the roof”.
He suggested that if the Scottish government needed “to be seen to be doing something” to tackle rising Covid-19 cases it could find the spaces and employ the additional staff needed to make physical distancing possible or address the ventilation challenges that schools face as winter approaches.
