Coronavirus: Nike conference kilt-fitter 'developed symptoms'

Hilton CarltonGoogle

The Nike event took place at the Hilton Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh in February

A woman who had contact with conference delegates at the centre of Scotland's first Covid-19 outbreak says she is "angry" the cases were not made public.

Gillian Russell, who fitted kilts for delegates at the Nike conference in Edinburgh, told Sky News she developed flu-like symptoms afterwards.

The February outbreak was only made public in a BBC Scotland documentary.

The first minister has said details were not made public at the time to protect patient confidentiality.

Ms Russell, 43, told Sky News: "I'm quite angry and upset about it. I don't like the thought that I could have possibly infected someone without my knowledge. We were never informed.

"The worry is that somebody is actually infected and, possibly, died. Maybe not directly through contact with me but directly through contact via me."

Scotland's first official Covid-19 case was announced on 1 March after a positive test was confirmed by NHS Tayside.

Details of the outbreak at the conference in the Hilton Carlton Hotel were first revealed in a BBC Scotland Disclosure documentary.

The investigation discovered that one of the 70 Nike employees from across the world who attended the conference on 26 and 27 February already had the virus.

This person infected many of their fellow delegates. Of the 25 confirmed cases linked to the event, eight were residents of Scotland.

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Nicola Sturgeon has said the Scottish government did not make the outbreak public because of concerns around patient confidentiality

Nicola Sturgeon has hit back at suggestions the outbreak was covered up and said that an "international contact tracing exercise" was carried out during the outbreak.

But since the documentary there have been reports that staff at other companies had fallen ill after coming into contact with the Nike delegates and had not been contacted.

Ms Russell said she and several colleagues began to feel unwell after helping fit hire kilts for 10 Nike delegates on 24 February.

She said: "I felt a bit fluey, a bit not right. I'm asthmatic, so I'd been finding I'd been taking my inhaler a lot more.

"There had been quite a lot of people as well that had similar symptoms, to the stage where we had people off sick."

But the shop manager said none of the staff were "putting two and two together and thinking 'this is the coronavirus'."

'Legitimate reason'

Ms Russell added she thought it was "wrong" the Scottish government had not made the outbreak public.

The first minister told reporters in her daily briefing last week that she understood concerns about the way the Scottish government had handled the outbreak.

But Ms Sturgeon said patient confidentiality was "not a made-up reason".

"It was the real reason and actually a legitimate reason when case numbers were so low and when the number of attendees from Scotland at this conference were also so low," she said.