On the first question, I think—as someone who has been an external observer for the past year—that all four nations need to work together. The reasons for that are twofold. First, we have a shared border and as long as we have a lot of traffic across that border, our efforts will be more fruitful if we try to collaborate and reach a co-ordinated agreement on how we work across all four nations than if we try to police the border. We should not be policing people’s movements any more than we need to.
Secondly, we knew from the start that two areas of society would be hit the hardest. One is travel and tourism, because of restrictions on the mobility of people. That applies to every country—passenger traffic is coming down not only because of the restrictions, but because of the virus. The pandemic has affected how people behave. Even if the airports were completely open, as they were during much of the first lockdown, the passenger numbers would be down anyway, because people shift their behaviour as they do not want to travel when there is a virus circulating.
The other area is the hospitality sector: bars, clubs and night-time live music. We always knew that the situation would be difficult for that sector. We need financial support for those sectors—we need to support aviation so that there is no loss of jobs, and we need to support hospitality. In that sense, as we move out of lockdown measures, we need to release people and get them back to work where we know that it is safe, and we need to concentrate our financial support, and Government support, on those sectors—aviation and associated travel and tourism, and hospitality—which we know will struggle because of the nature of the pandemic. That is unfortunately beyond the full control of any one nation—we need a four-nations approach, which needs to come from down south, in London.
On the second question, about variants and vaccines, we have been lucky in that the B117 variant that has taken off here is more transmissible but does not seem to reinfect people who have had Covid, and that our vaccines—we are using Pfizer and AstraZeneca—are still pretty effective against it.
As new variants emerge, we need—[Inaudible.]—more mutations. That is why the P1 variant is worrying: it has three different mutations in it. The question is whether people who have already had Covid will be reinfected. Is the new version so different that our immune system cannot recognise it, and our antibodies and T-cell response cannot protect against it?
There are worrying indications from South Africa and Brazil. South Africa has done tests with the new variant and found that it is reinfecting people who have had Covid previously. That means that we cannot work our way up and gain some immunity—we will get waves of the virus, because people might get the newer version. Brazil has found that some people have had two different versions of Covid at the same time, because they are so different. That is the worry. Luckily, the vaccines still seem to work pretty well against those variants. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is working even against the South African strain; it is being rolled out in the States, and we will get some stock of it later on this year.
I will make two final points. Right now, we are on a plane of scientific uncertainty. We do not know which new variants will emerge. With more and more replication of the virus, more mutations occur. Some have a selective advantage and they continue, and some do not, so they burn out. Unfortunately, the mutations that have a selective advantage are those that can reinfect people who have already had Covid, because those that cannot do so die out, while those that can will spread.
We are gambling a little bit in terms of how much we want to permit international mobility and travel, in the hope that, with the red-list approach, we can catch some of the variants, and that nothing really bad—such as the chance that something really difficult could emerge in a variant—will happen. There is uncertainty—no scientist can say for sure—but the question is how watertight we want to be in our approach. That depends on our approach to uncertainty and how much of a risk we want to take at this point in the pandemic.
11:15
The good news is that the messenger RNA vaccines—the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which use that new technology—can be changed quickly. Moderna has already created a South African booster, which people in the States can get as their first vaccine. We have not yet got the Moderna vaccine—we will get it probably in May or thereabouts. The vaccines can be changed quickly, which is really positive. The issue will be the time lag, once we have the vaccine, in getting it into enough people’s arms so that we reduce the spread and any associated hospitalisations.
In a way, we do not want to be in the current position of having a vaccine but having to wait to roll it out to all the groups while leaving restrictions in place. That is where the time lag would be—the companies can redevelop the vaccine within weeks; the challenge will be in manufacturing and deploying it. We are a rich country: in Scotland, and the UK, we are all in a privileged position, but there is a time issue. If we are into buying time and slowing the spread, we will need to put the brakes on, and put in place restrictions. Nobody wants to be back under restrictions once we lift them in the next few months.