Aberdeen pubs, restaurants and other hospitality businesses will be able to open from Wednesday the 26th of August once an environmental health check has been completed. The decision was made following a SGORR (the Scottish Government’s Resilience Committee) meeting yesterday (Sunday 23 August) when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon set out a timeline for the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in the city.
Hospitality business owners are being urged to get in touch with Aberdeen City Council if they have not already had an environmental health check.
A number of restrictions were lifted as of midnight yesterday, such as the five-mile travel limit, restrictions on gatherings and limitations on hospital and care home visits.
Said Nicola Sturgeon,“It’s due to the commitment of people in the city, as well as world class contact tracing that means we are now able to lift some of these measures from Monday and then again from Wednesday, but it is vitally important that everyone follows the FACTS rules in order to prevent an outbreak of this scale occurring again. That way we can move forward and get our economy, our society and our lives generally back to as much normality as possible.”
The SGORR meeting included partners from Aberdeen City Council, NHS Grampian and Police Scotland, and heard the latest update from the Incident Management Team on the level of the virus and its transmission in Aberdeen.
The latest figures show a total of 427 cases have been identified in the Grampian Health Board area since 26 July. Of these 259 are associated with the same cluster linked to Aberdeen pubs, and 1,258 contacts have now been identified from those.
Pictured: Amarone Restaurant on Aberdeen’s Union Street.