Scottish League Cup raises Covid-19 risk, says Prof Jason Leitch
- Published
Celtic beat Rangers 1-0 in December to win last season's League Cup final
The impending Scottish League Cup group stages will raise the risk of spreading Covid-19, national clinical director Jason Leitch has conceded.
Clubs outside the Scottish Premiership have not yet started their league programmes but join top-fight sides in cup action from Tuesday.
They do not need to test for the virus unless playing Premiership teams.
"It does raise a risk. But we decided contact sport outdoors is low enough risk to allow," Prof Leitch said.
He was speaking the day after the Premiership game between Kilmarnock and Motherwell at Rugby Park was postponed in the wake of six home players testing positive.
Players or staff at six of the 12 top-flight clubs have been forced to self-isolate since their season started on 1 August.
And eight sides are due to face lower-league opposition over the next week or so, many of whom are part-time so cannot operate in a 'football bubble'.
Prof Leitch insisted "there haven't been a load of transmissions" during matches themselves and stressed that the social distancing exemption only applied on the field of play.
"The transmissions have happened in the social areas, or the changing rooms, or the buses," he told BBC Radio Scotland's Off The Ball.
"Often indoors, poorly ventilated, people drop their guard, people are asymptomatic, they don't know they've got the virus and they are too close to people and they spread it."
Prof Leitch said the latest global Covid-19 death figures were sobering but said suggestions that big crowds were unlikely for two years were "probably quite pessimistic".
"I am not sure we're going to have big crowds until we get a vaccine, or a fancy new treatment, or a prevention, or if the virus changes," he said. "But I think that will be back by next summer."