Covid crisis: If we avoid complacency, there are better times ahead – Scotsman comment

With Europe’s worst Covid death toll and a record 9.9 per cent fall in gross domestic product last year, it is clear the UK has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic.

World Health Organisation director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned against complacency as Covid rates fall (Picture: Fabrice Coffini/pool/AFP via Getty Images)

It is too early, given we are still in the thick of it, for a proper assessment of the decisions made by both the UK and Scottish governments in dealing with this crisis, but that will come.

In the meantime, it is important to concentrate on more immediate issues like plotting the best way out of this awful situation, both in terms of the nation’s health and its economy.

The latest figures suggest the virus’s R number for the whole of the UK is now between 0.7 and 0.9 which, if accurate, means the epidemic is getting smaller.

But as the director-general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned, “complacency is as dangerous as the virus itself” and “now is not the time for any country to relax measures or for any individual to let down their guard”.

He added that “every life that's lost now is all the more tragic as vaccines are beginning to be rolled out”.

Making sure we do the right thing – abiding by the lockdown’s restrictions and getting vaccinated when our time comes – remains as important as it has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

But, as public health expert Professor Linda Bauld explained, we may get a reward if we do.

Asked about the prospect of summer holidays on BBC Radio Scotland, she said she was “very hopeful that we’ll have breaks in Scotland... I think we’re looking forward to that. I’m certainly already thinking about where I could go in a couple of months’ time”.

Professor Bauld also looked forward to the reopening of pubs and restaurants saying “I certainly think when the weather gets better we’ll be able to access [them] outdoors and then indoors with mitigation if we continue to make progress”; the important word in that sentence being “if”.

Given many of us are champing at the bit for a break from the same four walls and the tourist/hospitality sector has been among the worst affected, that would be good for us and good for the economy too. We just need to keep doing the right thing.

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