First Minister warns of 'highest risk' changes to lockdown so far
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First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that tomorrow marks the "biggest step so far" out of lockdown as Scotland records no new confirmed deaths from Covid-19.
Wednesday will see the reopening of Scotland's tourism and hospitality sector, with huge changes to safeguard against the transmission of the virus.
Pubs and restaurants will be permitted to welcome drinkers and diners indoors and hotels will also be allowed to reopen along with hairdressers, museums, galleries, cinemas and libraries.
Places of worship can also re-open for congregational services, communal prayer and contemplation and restrictions will also be eased on who can attend funerals, marriage ceremonies and civil partnership registrations.
Guidance has been published today about the collection and retention of customer, visitor and staff data for virus tracking purposes.
Ms Sturgeon said: "It applies to all sectors where there could well be a high level of interaction between people who do not know each other, and that could be through close contact between staff and customers, like hairdressers, or where relatively large numbers of people are in a relatively confined space for a long period such as restaurants, bars or other settings including places of worship.
“Data collection is very important. It means that customers or staff can be notified if they come into contact with somebody who is subsequently found to have Covid-19 and is therefore absolutely crucial to our test and protect system.
“It is one of the measures that we hope will help to build public and staff confidence as more premises reopen.
“To be very blunt with you, the changes that come into force tomorrow are the highest risk changes since we started to come out of lockdown because many of them involve indoor activity and we know that the risk of the virus spreading indoors, in a pub for example, is significantly higher than outdoors.”
Three further cases of Covid-19 infection have been confirmed in the past 24 hours, with two patients in intensive care.
No further dearths have been recorded – the sixth day in a row with no new deaths and the first Monday with no deaths registered since March 10.
