Council leaders in Courier Country are expecting little change to their coronavirus tiers in First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s speech today.
Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross and Fife are all in Tier Three, and it looks like that will continue to be the case for another week at least.
Dundee City Council leader John Alexander said: “The trend continues to be a positive one and case numbers continue to decline, which is good news. It shows that people are following the advice and I’m grateful to everyone for that.
“With new cases on Monday sitting at 17 compared to the 50-60 a day that we were seeing a few weeks ago, things are stable. Dundee is currently sitting below the Scottish average rate per 100k people and therefore, I don’t believe that there’s a requirement for Dundee to go into level four at this point and I’m feeding this back to colleagues.
“We can’t be complacent, of course, but we should take some solace from the fact that these restrictions are helping to reduce covid-19’s spread amongst out communities. Please stick with it.”
Meanwhile in Fife, cases have risen a fraction, but council co-leader David Alexander said he doesn’t expect it to be by enough to merit a move to Tier Four.
He said: “I don’t expect any change. The situation in Fife is that, if anything, cases have gone up slightly.
“We fully expect to stay in Tier Three as the change has not been enormous.
“Our message is that if you want to have a really good Christmas, you need to stick to the rules.”
In Angus, leader David Fairweather says he is aiming to be moved back into Tier Two next week.
“We’ve only been in Tier Three since Friday so we don’t expect any change.
“We still find being in Tier Three disappointing, looking at how many cases there are in parts of the central belt compared to Angus.
“We understand the importance of Ninewells in the decision, but we hope that a week tomorrow, we’ll be in Tier Two again.
“The feeling is one of dismay. Hospitality businesses were already suffering and this hasn’t helped.”