The Lemon Fool

Ferguson’s comments came as the national clinical director of the Scottish government, Prof Jason Leitch, described how the country’s case rate was “dramatically falling”. “We had five out of the top 10 local authorities in the UK, now we have none in the top 150,” Leitch told Today.

“We’ve now seen hospitalisations fall. Around 3% of positive people get admitted to hospital but they are now younger, relatively healthy and discharged quicker. But some stay, and we’ve had many deaths over the last few days.”

He said the participation of fans in Euro 2020 had caused a spike in cases, but said it was “important to keep the football in perspective”.

“The Scotland-England game gave us a spike because of travel, not necessarily Wembley. Unfortunately, from a sporting perspective, Scotland went out far too early. But epidemiologically speaking, that probably did us some favours,” he said.

“We tested a lot of these fans and for a short time [cases] went from 1:1 male-female to 9:1 male-female. It has now returned to 1:1.”