Home   News   Article

First Minister speaks of personal impact on family of coronavirus; Nicola Sturgeon speaks out over lockdown restrictions


By Scott Maclennan

Easier access to your trusted, local news. Subscribe to a digital package and support local news publishing.



Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she feels 'emotional' not being able to see her family.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she feels 'emotional' not being able to see her family.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has spoken about the emotional impact that Covid-19 has had on her.

In an hour-long radio interview from her official residence at Bute House, the First Minister said among the hardest things was not being able to see her family because of the risk of infection.

“On one level maybe it is easier for me because I am so consumed literally every minute of the day – and much of the night as well – with the response and dealing with it and taking the decisions that are essential," she said.

“The things that I am struggling with are the same things that everyone else is struggling with – I can’t see my mum and dad right now because they are in the older age group; I can’t see my mother-in-law because she is both in the older age group and shielded category as well, so I am missing that.

“I am struggling with all these things just like everybody else is and my sister is a frontline health worker – my sister-in-law is a frontline health worker – and they say to me that I must be stressed right now. But what I am thinking right now is that, however tough my job is, it is nothing compared to theirs and what the frontline are doing.

“My mum would say that I don’t go and see her often enough anyway, but the very idea that I cannot go and see my mum and my dad right now, if I stop and allow myself to think about it, then it will upset me as it upsets anybody."

The First Minister also refused to put an end date on the lockdown saying she simply did not know when it would end and it was better not to guess though she anticipated a phased reduction of restrictions.

“I can tell people about the things that I know but part of that is being honest about the things that I don’t yet know," she said.

“These measures that we have been taking now for about 10 days, we said because of the length of time this virus takes to incubate in people it was always going to take two or three weeks to know what kind of impact they would have on the spread of the virus.

“We need to have that information before we can tell people how long it will last, but I can’t tell people that it is likely to end any time soon and I know that is really hard to hear.

“But I can’t be in a situation where I just tell people what they want to hear and then come back a week later and say I am sorry about that but it is actually much worse.

“It may be we get to a point where we gradually lift these measures but it won’t be a flicking a switch or an all or nothing approach, we may gradually ease them over a period of time.”


Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More