Thread by @ChrisMusson

Edinburgh Uni's Prof Mark Woolhouse (Scot Gov adviser) tells Holyrood's Covid committee: “Scotland was not close to elimination at any stage during this epidemic.”

Other experts (eg Prof Devi Sridhar) and Nicola Sturgeon have said that Scotland was close to elimination in summer

Prof Woolhouse, chair of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, says there were low numbers of "reported" cases during the summer in Scotland, but modelling using a method that has been “very well validated since” show elimination was not close

Prof Woolhouse casts doubt on whether an elimination strategy in Scotland (seemingly favoured by Scot Gov) could work. He says there is "no route" for Scotland to get to where New Zealand (which has adopted a successful elimination strategy) is now

Prof Woolhouse: "There appears to be no route or at least no route that any country in the world has found to get from where Scotland is now to where New Zealand is now. There's no route there. The route was back in February. We missed our chance to be like NZ back in February"

Prof Woolhouse: "You can't have an elimination strategy in Australia or Scotland or anywhere else and also be relaxing measures.
They are contradictory aims. So if you're going for elimination you have to be locked down for a very, very long time given where we started."

On general strategy, Prof Woolhouse says we "didn't pay nearly enough attention to doing things beyond lockdown", such as protecting the "vulnerable in care homes, and the wider community"

Prof Woolhouse: “We didn't pay nearly enough attention to doing things beyond lockdown. The vulnerable in care homes, and the wider community. We simply didn't do that enough, all we had was shielding which wasn't a particularly effective policy according to most people..."

Prof Woolhouse: "... And a little bit of extra advice for the over 70s. We could have put so much more effort into protecting the people who needed protecting. We do now recognise this"

Prof Mark Woolhouse says current situation in Scotland is "delicate and complex", reduction have mostly been in the old variant, with new variants mostly "holding steady".

"We're on a knife edge in terms of suppressing new variants"

Prof Woolhouse: "We're on a knife edge in terms of suppressing new variants, which... makes elimination of the new variants, through suppression methods, through lockdown methods, I'm not clear how we could achieve that. We're barely driving it down at all"

Prof Mark Woolhouse: "We need some sustainable ways to deal with these new variants and adjustments to the vaccine would seem to be the primary way."