Freeman discusses the Covid outbreak following a conference in Edinburgh by sportswear firm Nike - an incident that's already come up once this afternoon.

She says it was contact-tracing which prevented the virus from spreading further than the people who were infected at that event. One single case led to 38 people getting the virus, out of 71 delegates.

The "delay" phase of the Covid outbreak involved restricting social movement and congregation, explains Jeane Freeman. This "spread out the peak" and helped to reduce NHS overwhelm, she adds.

She says the strategy was to "flatten the curve" (a phrase that describes the effect of such interventions on the Covid infection rate when plotted visually on a graph). The aim was to help Scotland cope with the outbreak.

In summer, more people were outside and virus transmission was lower than when people were gathered together in confined spaces in the colder months, Freeman explains.

Freeman explains that there was a continuous "tension" throughout the pandemic between, on the one hand, acting fast and decisively, and on the other, having enough evidence to convince the public that they should comply with what they were being asked to do.

She says: "People want to know why you're stopping them from doing things, and if they don't believe it's a good reason, they're not going to comply with that.

"In public health, we need to be in a situation where people believe there is a basis for what you're asking them to do that is about protecting themselves but also protecting others."

Freeman is asked about Scotland rugby fans travelling at the end of February to away matches in Italy. Had that been brought to her attention, the inquiry lawyer asks.

“Yes I was aware of those matches," she says, "and the risk of people returning from those matches, and also from skiing holidays.”

Freeman is asked if it was advisable to allow large groups of people to go to northern Italy, which was the epicentre of the pandemic in Europe at the time.

“We could have issued advice not to go, but we couldn’t stop people going” she says. She points out that it is that Westminster government that controls the UK's borders.

Jamie Dawson KC turns to the notebook of Derek Grieve, a civil servant who worked with Jeane Freeman at the start of the pandemic.

He quotes from a section in which Grieve vented frustrations after a Cobra emergency meeting, writing: "It's clear all departments in UK government are fully engaged and mobilised in a way that the SG (Scottish government) simply isn't."

Dawson then quotes Grieve saying that few people believed that the virus was going to be serious. He asks if there was a general lack of awareness about the seriousness of the situation within the Scottish health directorate.

Freeman says that was not the view of health ministers, or the first minister or her deputy. But she says Grieve was reasonably frustrated other parts of the directorate were taking the view that this was a public health matter and not for them.

Image source, UK Covid inquiry

Jamie Dawson KC takes Ms Freeman back to early 2020. If things escalated according to predictions by Prof Woolhouse, was it Scotland's role to allow the UK government to implement policy and for Scotland to implement an operational response?

Freeman says she understood a collaborative, four-nations approach would unfold. "What that means is - as far as possible - we would share information, share decision-making, agree the direction. And the response we would take, (we would) co-ordinate that where it was possible."

But, she says, the UK's different nations also went on caveat that approach with a move to "diverge one from the other based on our judgement of what is right for the population we serve."

And we assume this will be the final session of the day. Don't forget you can watch it live by tapping the "play" button at the top of this page.

Kirsten Campbell
BBC Scotland political correspondent

Test, test, test was the advice from the World Health Organisation when the pandemic hit.

But Jeane Freeman has admitted that Scotland did not have the capacity to do that. She insisted that her government moved quickly to track down the people, the kit and the lab space to increase that capacity.

The UK government stepped in to fund the Lighthouse lab, which carried out mass-testing of public samples for Covid-19. Meanwhile, the testing of hospital patients was done by NHS Scotland.

Freeman believes that retaining that core testing capacity is one of the lessons that should be learned from the pandemic, and has expressed disappointment that the Glasgow Lighthouse lab hasn't been kept for similar outbreaks in the future.

In numbers: Scotland's Covid outbreakpublished at 15:20 Greenwich Mean Time 29 January

15:20 GMT 29 January

Susie Forrest
Health producer, BBC Scotland

How accurate were the predictions made to ministers in the early days of the pandemic?

Freeman has spoken about figures presented to her from modelling done in March 2020 - which suggested a reasonable worst-case scenario in which 80% of the population would become infected, and 4% of them would need intensive care treatment.

She said the modelling from the previous month had produced an estimate of 75,950 hospital admissions in Scotland - not all at once, but over a period of time - in an NHS which had a bed capacity of just 3,000.

But how close was that to what actually came to pass? Public Health Scotland (PHS) last published a cumulative total in May 2023 of 59,674 hospital admissions in over three years of Covid-19.

And as for the number of people infected, in May 2023 the total counted by PHS was just over two million - however, not everyone who was infected was tested, and not everyone who was tested recorded it in any system - so this is likely to be a significant underestimate.

Image source, UK Covid inquiry

Freeman also told inquiry about a Cobra meeting that was chaired by her counterpart, then-UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

She said “my feeling at that meeting was there wasn't sufficient urgency from the UK government”.

Freeman recalled that at that meeting she queried officials' intention to focus on flights into the UK from Wuhan in China - arguing that many people would arrive via secondary airports.

Scottish government officials were also “frustrated”, she says, by slow or absent information from the UK government.

Before the interval, discussion turned to how limitations on testing could have been overcome. Freeman said there were at least one or two private testing facilities during those early days of the pandemic.

She said the Scottish government looked at private facilities in terms of bed space - not for Covid, but for other procedures, and "whether or not we could buy up those beds for the NHS".

One private lab was used, though the numbers of people were very small. "But we needed all the capacity we could get".

The inquiry has just risen for another short break.

Just beforehand, it was shown minutes of a Scottish government cabinet meeting from 28 January 2020 in which ministers discussed how the virus was spreading.

Freeman said she received "pretty categoric" advice four days beforehand that people carrying the virus were only infectious to others when experiencing symptoms.

She said: "That of course began to change as various experts in the field understood the virus better.

"As the pandemic progressed, we increasingly understood the importance of acting fast but at this time, it still felt like there was a degree of uncertainty around about the nature of this virus and how it would behave."

“There was no public messaging of the threat until the first case was announced on 1 March,” suggests inquiry lawyer Jamie Dawson.

“I believe that is correct” replies Freeman. But she says a lot of work was going on “about the information that would be used to communicate with the public.”

Jamie Dawson KC just made reference to a Nike conference in Edinburgh which was traced as the source of Scotland's the first Covid outbreak.

A Public Health Scotland report found a single case among the 71 delegates led to 38 further infections.

It was reported to Health Protection Scotland on 2 March 2020 - the day after Scotland's first confirmed case of the virus was announced.

But it only became public following a BBC Disclosure investigation in May 2020. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later hit back at suggestions that the outbreak was covered up and said details were not made public at the time because of patient confidentiality guidelines.

But she said she understood the concerns over the way information about the conference cases was handled.

• Read more here

Jamie Dawson KC turns to the implementation of isolation, infection-control and contact-tracing measures.

Freeman says a contact-tracing system was in place after cases were linked to a conference in Edinburgh by sportswear firm Nike - which were considered the first outbreak in Scotland.

The former Scottish health secretary says containment rested a lot on contact-tracing, which began with a positive test. But tracing was limited at the outset due to the low testing capacity.

We're still looking at the early days of the virus outbreak. Jamie Dawson KC asks Scotland lacked the skills, kit or capability to carry out adequate testing at the time.

Freeman says Scotland did have the skills and the Glasgow Lighthouse Labs - a testing "superlab" - was an example of this, highlighting how skilled personnel could be brought in quickly.

She says: "What we did not have was the physical space or the kit in order to do that."

By 18 March 2020, Scotland had a capacity of 780 PCR tests per day, Freeman tells the inquiry. This number increased by the end of April to 4,350 and then increased "exponentially".

But Baroness Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, wants to know if Freeman asked anyone why there was such a low testing capacity at the start of the pandemic.

Freeman says she did so "very robust terms" - and the answer was that in the prioritisation of NHS resource it had not featured highly.

One of the important lessons to be learned is maintaining a core level of testing, she reflects.

Freeman explains that testing vulnerable people was important from the outset, as was the expansion of testing capacity. "We did not have sufficient testing capability," she admits.

She explains that her initial concern was not about "who is going to be tested?" but instead "how can we increase our testing capacity?"

Freeman explains that the initial capacity was just 350 a day.

Freeman is now asked: “When did ICU and ventilators become a primary consideration?”

She says the prediction in February 2020 was for 75,950 hospitalisations throughout the pandemic. Scotland's total bed capacity at the time was 3,000.

Dawson asks her what the numbers were based on, and she says they were worked out as a proportion of overall UK figures - taking into account local comorbidities.

Image source, UK Covid inquiry

Jeane Freeman says officials discussed the possibility of a high proportion of the population getting infected by Covid - leading to a high proportion of hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths.

"That told me that I had to undertake work with our health service colleagues, our NHS colleagues, to look at what is our bed capacity (and) what do we need to do to increase our bed capacity so that we can take people who are ill."

She says decision-makers also considered how to increase the number of ventilators in ICUs.