cotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it may be possible to lift the latest Covid-19 restrictions if the vaccination programme manages to push ahead of the virus in the “race” over the coming months.
She said the health service hopes to vaccinate everyone on the priority list – some 2.7 million people – by early May.
Speaking on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme, she said it is difficult to be definitive about when the restrictions will be lifted.
“I described it yesterday as a race: we’ve got the vaccines in one lane – we’re trying to accelerate that.
“We’ve got the virus, which has just learned to run faster, in the other lane, and we’ve got to slow it down.”
She continued: “Lockdown is about trying to slow down the virus and push rates of it back down.
“Now, if we manage to do that, then hopefully we will be able to start lifting some of these restrictions while the vaccination programme is ongoing, even in that first phase of it.
“But I can’t be certain about that yet, because it’s dependent on us managing to get the levels of infection down.”
