Scots are being urged to practice good hygiene ahead of the winter months as covid infections are expected to rise.
The latest Office for National Statistics revealed that Scotland has the highest rate of infection across the United Kingdom with an estimated 98,800 people or one in 55 with the virus.
That's compared to one in 70 in England, one in 75 in Wales and one in 80 in Northern Ireland. Last week Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said there was a "high possibility" another coronavirus wave could hit Scotland over the coming months.
Covid figures have fallen in Scotland in the last week but Alex McMahon, Chief Nursing Officer at the Scottish Government, told members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee at Holyrood about some of the measures that could in put in place over the coming months.
Convener of the committee and SNP MSP Gillian Martin asked McMahon around the messaging ahead of the winter.
She said: "Do you think we need to really give a clear public message that covid is not away, and a lot of the things that you've got very good at doing in the last couple of years, you need to remember to still do them."
McMahon replied: "I think that's a really important point. I guess alongside the vaccination and the covid booster programmes, using those opportunities to reinforce those messages to the general public about the importance of hand washing.
"That's one of the single biggest things we can do. Things like masks are actually further down the chain of prevention. Ventilation, keeping your windows open when you've got people in your house.
"We will go back and revisit some of that messaging that we had during the peak of covid. It's not going away. There may be less people in the hospitals, there may be a slight decrease the number of people with covid but it's still in our system."
Last week Yousaf said the NHS in Scotland would come under strain due to a number of issues including the possibility of another covid rise.
He said: "I will set out to parliament, subject to parliamentary business being agreed in the next fortnight, what our winter plan will be and yes, we are anticipating a really difficult winter, an exceptionally difficult winter because we expect that we might get a resurgence of flu which we haven't seen in the last couple of years and there is a high possibility we suspect of course of another Covid wave, and then there's the usual issue of slips, trips and falls."
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