Closing schools during coronavirus pandemic may have been a mistake, admits Scottish health chief

Professor Jason Leitch has admitted that it might have been a mistake to close schools during the Covid pandemic.

Scotland’s national clinical director said different decisions could have been made had the full impact of the lockdown been known.

Professor Leitch, who spearheaded the Covid campaign, added that he was recruited for Scottish government television briefings out of fear that only half the nation would like First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

His comments appear to undermine the hardline tactics adopted by the Scottish and UK governments, which caused major disruption to education, the NHS, business and society for two years.

Yesterday, a group of parents welcomed his apparent “acknowledgment” that closing schools was a “terrible” choice.

Professor Leitch stressed that during the pandemic he was a spokesman for the SNP Government and not a decision maker.

But he would advise ministers when he felt it was necessary to ‘go hard on this’.

Professor Leitch added: ‘We needed public consent because we are a democracy.

‘The feeling was that a clinical leader would be better than a politician because only half (of the country) liked Nicola Sturgeon and the other half didn’t. But more than half trusted her.

His comments came at a talk titled Faith in the Covid era, at Christ Church in Morningside, Edinburgh, last week.

He continued: ‘I made some missteps. We did what we did because of the knowledge we had at the time. I don’t know if we would do it the same way again because now we have different knowledge.

‘I wonder if closing the schools is something we would reconsider. Lockdown is an outdated approach to control a disease that is traveling around the world on a plane.”

Professor Leitch, a 54-year-old qualified dentist and member of Airdrie Baptist Church, Lanarkshire, said that during the pandemic he “felt unchristian not being able to embrace and make human connections”.

In his talk, he said: ‘In response to the question, what did we do with faith? It’s more important to ask what we did to humans and that will live with me forever.

‘I had family that I didn’t see and they weren’t being educated. There were elders in my church who were dying alone.

‘That was horrible. And what was happening in the nursing homes and in the schools will stay with me forever.’

A spokesperson for children’s rights group UFTScotland said: “We are now seeing an acknowledgment that homeschooling was a terrible political decision that impacted a generation.”

‘We knew from the data at the time that Covid was affecting older people and not a problem for younger people and the harm of closing schools was never considered.

Everyone lost their minds and the children were thrown under a bus. Now Professor Leitch admits that children are not educated.

The youngest children were most affected by the Covid lockdowns, with teachers reporting that children are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior and feelings of being overwhelmed in groups

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “We repeatedly called on Nicola Sturgeon’s government to put schools first when it came to easing lockdown restrictions, to limit the huge disruption to education for students, but they were invariably the last to see the restrictions lifted.

Professor Leitch’s comment suggests that he thinks we were right.

The Scottish government said it was committed to a public inquiry into its handling of the pandemic.

A spokesperson added: “Our priority during the pandemic was to save lives and reduce damage from the disease.”