Restriction measures to combat Covid-19 could be in place for up to 13 weeks says Scotland's chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood
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RESTRICTIONS on people's movements could remain in place for up to 13 weeks, Scotland's chief medical officer has warned.
Dr Catherine Calderwood claimed if the current lockdown measures were lifted before that then it was likely that the virus would continue to be transmitted between people.
She was speaking on BBC Radio Four's Broadcasting House, when she added: "I think we've seen really good evidence of people taking themselves back into their homes not going out nearly as much this week."
Dr Calderwood said modelling showed that periods of restrictions of less than 13 weeks led to the virus resurfacing again "because we haven't stopped it transmitting amongst lots of people".
"We've now had quite significant lockdown-type measure in the UK for a week, we know that we can tell whether that's making a difference within two weeks to three weeks so that modelling is being relooked at", she added.
She said she was "optimistic" the high projected death toll of the virus could be avoided - if people comply with the restrictions put in place then scenarios published which suggest up to 260,000 excess deaths in the UK will not come to pass.
She said: "We would hope we are looking at a more optimistic level given the range of measures we have put in which are quite extreme and also given the level of compliance.
"We are very hopeful that that huge figure of 260,000 excess deaths is not going to be the reality."
She said London has been hit very hard and the peak could be two or three weeks away.
"Our peaks might be smaller because we currently have fewer cases."
Dr Calderwood said that Scotland had already doubled its ventilator capacity and that plans were in place to quadruple the capacity Scotland had before the outbreak.
She added: "Depending on how well these suppression measures work, we think we are coming close to having enough ventilators for the peak of the virus outbreak.
"We have orders coming from countries across the world, I understand some from Germany cleared customs in Folkestone on Friday and are making their way to Scotland and we now have a group of all four UK nations talking about where the ventilators coming into the country should go, and they will be distributed on clinical need across the four countries."
