Cole-Hamilton responds to lack of Covid preparedness comments

Responding to Professor Mark Woolhouse’s interview on BBC Radio Scotland, where he said that concern about Covid-19 in the months leading up to the pandemic “didn’t get translated through the government advisory systems as they existed at the time into a strong call for action…when it was needed”, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“Ministers were consistently warned that a pandemic was the single biggest threat to Scotland, but when it struck, the government was totally unprepared and distracted.

“Bereaved families will never have the full picture of what went wrong because Nicola Sturgeon and other senior figures deleted their pandemic messages.

“These were systematic failings, and the ongoing public inquiries must ensure that lessons are learned to prevent them from ever happening again.”