By Brenda Steele:

At the ScotGov Coronavirus press conference yesterday, 

https://mobile.twitter.com/scotgov/status/1336645619771985922

Nicola Sturgeon talked briefly about the Report on Genomics Research at 13m10s in.  Jason Leitch spoke rather more extensively about how the virus had been re-introduced into Scotland from England and other countries, causing the second wave.

This is the report:

https://www.cogconsortium.uk/news_item/two-new-reports-to-sage-on-the-genomic-analysis-of-epidemic-waves-of-covid-19-in-scotland-and-wales/

Read the whole or listen for the short version from the press conference.

Not the first piece of research on the subject. Remember this?

Research from scientists in Switzerland, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, has revealed that a new variant of coronavirus, known as 20A.EU1, appears to have cropped up in Spain during the summer and has since spread to multiple European countries, including the UK. “In Wales and Scotland the variant was at 80% in mid-September, whereas frequencies in Switzerland and England were around 50% at that time,” the authors said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/coronavirus-strain-from-spain-accounts-for-most-uk-cases-study

At 49m in Tom Martin from the Daily express comes in with a Genomic Study question and had lots of concerns about travel, He wanted to know how that report would affect ScotGov restrictions and if/when the law around travel was reviewed. He seemed particularly exercised about travel to other parts of the UK.   He got quite a long answer. 

At 1h: 10m in Alistair Grant of the Herald had a two part question The first part was yet another gripe about an  area (Edinburgh) not being moved down a level, and is just part of the normal weekly moaning on behalf of Tory politicians, but the second is the one that really astounds. He wanted advice on booking a holiday abroad for next year!  Honestly, we haven’t got through Christmas yet. What a question!  

Good to see that the FM and Jason Leitch were very clear that it was far too early to be thinking of such things. Jason Leitch very percipiently pointed out that  we don’t know what the situation will be in other countries – and he was right as you can see below.

Following on from the Boris and Ursula no-deal dinner and yet another Brexit deadline we have this from an  EU spokesman:

Only a handful of countries with low coronavirus rates are exempt from rules that prohibit non-essential visitors from outside the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) – with the UK included only until the end of the Brexit transition period.

EU member states agreed in October to adopt a European council proposal to allow non-essential travel from a small group of countries with lower levels of Covid cases including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.

An EU commission spokesman last week said there were no plans to extend that to the UK. “This is a decision for the council to make,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/09/uk-holidaymakers-could-be-barred-from-visiting-eu-under-covid-safety-rules

Our choices may be limited – very limited.