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We have to persist with the message about the importance of vaccination. As I said in my answers to Murdo Fraser, I am concerned by an attitude of mind that says that omicron is much softer than previous variants. That view is allowed to prevail precisely because of the robustness of vaccination. If we do not have robust vaccination, we will be exposed to much more serious illness.

That brings me back to Mr Mason’s first question, about hospital admissions. If people are more seriously ill and spend more time in hospital, those numbers will not come down, and our hospitals will face a problem. I come back to the point that I have reiterated to the committee on a number of occasions: our national health service came closer to being overtopped during omicron than during any other part of the experience of Covid.

I do not have the precise comparative numbers in front of me today, so I hope that Mr Whittle will forgive me for giving rough numbers based on my recollection. Three weeks ago, when the Government set out the strategic framework, the number of people in hospital with Covid was about 1,060—that is the figure that comes to mind. On Tuesday, that number was a few short of 2,000. It had virtually doubled in the space of three weeks. That high level of in-patients is why the Government has not followed through on all the steps that we intended to take on 21 March.

Obviously, there is a world of a difference between having about 1,000 patients in hospital with Covid and 2,000 patients. It leads to significant challenges relating to the treatment of patients with Covid, such as the need to isolate them from other patients, which undermines hospital capacity.

We really must see those numbers come down significantly. We are seeing signs of that happening now, but we need there to be further reductions to create the space for smoother access to hospital care for people with a variety of other conditions.

Yes, that is a fair assumption. As Mr Whittle has said, the issue that most troubles leaders in the health service right now is that we have come out of an intense period of managing Covid, and it is likely to be followed by an intense period of managing non-Covid conditions.

Winter in the national health service is lasting an awful long time. In fact, winter feels like it is here all the time. Winter pressures tend to last between October to March. We are almost at the end of March and it does not look like the situation in hospitals is improving to any extent whatsoever. That places a huge burden on members of staff, who are already very tired. Some of them will also have been ill, and they might still be trying to fully recover. As we all know, one of the effects of Covid is that people often experience fatigue over a long period. Health service staff are putting in very demanding shifts. If they are tired when they start them as a result of their having had Covid, which is highly likely, given where they are working, that is an additional burden for the health service to manage.

There is not a polite way of describing it.

Yes—it was the 2 Sisters factory.

There is a fine judgment to be made. There is a question—Government has to wrestle with this at all times—regarding what constitutes proportionate action. If the prevalence of Covid was to reduce significantly in our society but we were still testing as if it was as virulent as it has been in recent weeks, I think that the Government would face some challenges as to the proportionality of our actions and requirements, and the use of public money, because there was not the community-wide prevalence that would justify a testing infrastructure of the type that we have had in place until now. That is why the risk-based assessment that is included in the transition plan is relevant for the judgments that we have made.

I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss a number of matters, including updates to Parliament on Covid-19.

As the First Minister set out on Tuesday, there has been a recent increase in cases driven by the BA.2 sub-lineage of the omicron variant. It is now the dominant strain in Scotland and accounts for more than 80 per cent of all reported cases.

Encouragingly, there is no evidence that BA.2 causes more severe illness than BA.1 or that it is more effective at evading natural immunity or immunity through vaccination. We continue to observe strong evidence that the link between infection and serious health harm has weakened considerably due to immune protection. Therefore, extension of the vaccination programme is on-going, in line with Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advice.

Letters inviting five to 11-year-olds who are not in higher-risk groups for vaccination started arriving at the end of last week. Booster jags for older adults in care homes also started last week. Additional boosters for those who are immunosuppressed will start from mid-April.

As the First Minister announced, from Friday, and in line with other UK nations, all remaining Covid-related travel restrictions in Scotland will be lifted. Although we have some concerns about that, UK travel patterns mean that diverging from the rest of the UK would cause economic disadvantage without delivering any meaningful public health benefit.

From Monday 21 March—with one temporary exception—the remaining domestic legal measures will be lifted and replaced with appropriate guidance. That means that, on Monday, the requirement on businesses and service providers to retain customer contact details will end. So, too, will the requirement for businesses, places of worship and service providers to have regard to Scottish Government guidance on Covid and to take the reasonably practicable measures that are set out in the guidance. The exception relates to the requirement to wear face coverings on public transport and in certain indoor settings.

Given the current spike in case numbers, continued widespread use of face coverings will provide some additional protection, particularly for the most vulnerable, at a time when the risk of infection is very high, and it may help us to get over the spike more quickly. We will review it again in two weeks’ time.

The other issue that the First Minister covered on Tuesday was testing. For the next month, until Easter, there will be no change to our testing advice. However, from 18 April, with the exception of health and care settings, we will no longer advise people without symptoms to test twice weekly. From the end of April, all routine population-wide testing will end, and, from 1 May, instead of a population-wide approach, we will use testing on a targeted basis. That marks steady progress back towards normal life and a more sustainable way of managing the virus.

We will do everything we can to support those who have worked on the testing programme during the transition. I echo the First Minister’s gratitude and thank all of them for their invaluable contribution over the past two years.

I am happy to answer questions from the committee.

The arguments have been well aired. The points that Mr Mason and Mr Rowley have made recognise that the pandemic is not over in any shape or form. As a consequence, we must have measures available to enable us to respond, should the situation deteriorate.

On the issue of local outbreak management, which Mr Fairlie raised with me, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022 provide for the necessary interventions for effective outbreak management in trying to deal with local outbreaks that might create a wider difficulty.

The Government seeks this extension to enable us to have the capacity to respond should we need to. It is not because we will exercise the powers; it is to give us the capacity to do so, as members of the public will expect. I would therefore appreciate it if the committee would support the regulations that are in front of it.

There will always be a degree of waste—I suppose that there is no better word for it—in the vaccination programme. I think that we all accept that, and ministers have made it very clear that we want to minimise that. If memory serves, I think that the vaccination programme commenced with an assumption that there might be as much as 5 per cent waste, but the practical reality is that, throughout the programme, there has been less than 1 per cent waste. If it is a question of performance against expectation, I think that we would have to say that that was a very good performance.

I would have to check the detail of the newspaper report that you referred to, but we are endeavouring to maximise participation in the vaccination programme. We are doing that because vaccination is absolutely the key to minimising the harm of Covid. One thing that concerns me about the narrative with regard to the discussion in recent weeks about Covid—particularly omicron—is the suggestion that omicron has been milder than previous variants. I think that that is the wrong way to look at the issue. I think that the vaccination programme is giving a lot more protection from what happens to be called omicron. There are numerous cases of people with the omicron variant who have faced very severe health consequences, because they have been unvaccinated.

We have to be careful about undervaluing the impact of the vaccination programme, as it has been crucial in tackling the effect of Covid, whether that be omicron or whatever. Fellow citizens of ours are having a very hard time with omicron—in many cases, that is because they are unvaccinated. The strength of the arguments in support of vaccination is, in my view, absolutely overwhelming, and the Government is using those arguments to encourage uptake of vaccination.

The more we have a sense that the worst of Covid is past us, the more there might be a sense that people do not need to get vaccinated. I would take entirely the opposite view and say that it is vaccination that is giving us the protection against Covid that people need.

Mr Rowley is tempting me to go into an area that has been a significant source of frustration for me for some time. The Government could not be clearer about the need for joined-up working and person-centred activity at the local level. I have been banging on about that for years, and it is central to the Covid recovery strategy.

I would not describe the situation as casually as saying that it is “hit or miss”, as Mr Rowley does, but I do not think that it is perfect. The strength of third sector contributions is suitably, or possibly even fully, taken into account in some parts of the country, but I do not think that it is in other parts of the country, and I do not think that it is all person centred. I think that there is still an increasing extent to which members of the public are expected to join up public services, whereas it should not be for them to do that; it should be for public services to be joined up and available to members of the public to access.

Those messages are absolutely central, and I am very confident that the message that Mr Rowley seeks to put forward is being put forward by ministers. I hear it being put forward by the health secretary and by the social justice secretary in her dialogue with local government. I certainly put it forward in my dialogue with both of them. Indeed, those two Cabinet colleagues and I used the opportunity of a discussion with more than 200 people who work in the leadership of health and social care activity around the country—the fact that 200 people had to be on the call tells its own story—to stress the importance of ensuring that all capacity, no matter whether it comes from the third sector, the private sector or the public sector, is woven together into a single proposition that is available for members of the public.

I think that that is strong in some parts of the country. In other parts of the country, there is still a distance to be travelled.