Covid & Scottish football: Professor Jason Leitch answers key questions

The opening two months of the Scottish football season have been riven with confusion, dismay, and apparent inconsistencies as the game wrestles with life in the time of Covid-19.

In an attempt to bring some sort of clarity, BBC Scotland spoke to national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch to try and debunk some mistruths, clarify grey areas, and challenge some of those anomalies...

Are you content the football protocols are working?

Plans put in place to enable football to return in June have, for the most part, worked. Six of the 12 Scottish Premiership clubs have had players or staff self-isolate but widespread outbreaks had been avoided until six positive tests were returned by Kilmarnock last week.

"I think the sector has done a great job. There have been positive cases in elite football - as there have been in other sectors - because this is a cunning virus. It finds its way in.

"The single most important tool we have for now is human behaviour so keeping yourself apart from other households is the biggest thing you can do. That's whether you're Kilmarnock's goalkeeper, St Mirren's centre-half or a waitress in a pub.

"Sport in the main have done that really well. Everything I've seen is exemplary."

Why were Kilmarnock's squad told to self-isolate?

The entire Kilmarnock squad is self-isolating for 14 days after six positive tests in the past week and the club could face sanctions if they are found to have breached Covid protocols.

But Aberdeen and St Mirren did not have to do likewise despite returning more than one positive test. What is the difference?

"Kilmarnock is a workplace outbreak. The other high-profile ones in football were individuals - flew to Spain, went to hospitality and weren't distanced.

"If it was a call centre, test and protect go in and get them to talk us through their day, and that happens with every health board. At a football club we'd ask thing like where they sat in the dressing room, on the bus, where they ate.

"After that, the incident management team make a judgement based on the evidence about the risk to others and on this occasion they decided it was significant enough to ask them to self-isolate.

"Why are Kilmarnock self-isolating but St Mirren didn't have to? St Mirren could evidence that they'd contained it, but it is also a timing thing. With any positive test, people are asked to detail their movements in the 48 hours before they first started to notice symptoms.

"If they were not mixing with the squad in that time, the risk of transmission is less."

Does not having testing in lower leagues worry you?

SPFL sides in the Championship, League 1 and League 2 will begin their seasons this week in the League Cup group stages. As it stands, those teams need only test for Covid-19 in the days before playing Premiership opposition.

"There is risk and we hope clubs will take that very seriously. We've brought back contact sports outside for adults - five-a-side football, for example - and we've not seen big outbreaks there so I'm confident if we do it right, we can do it safely, but it won't be risk free."

If lower-league players don't have to test, why do Premiership ones?

Premiership teams have been testing either once or twice a week since returning to training in June. But if lower-league players do not have to take tests, do their top-flight equivalents need to continue doing so?

"There is a logical argument to say not to bother but we think testing adds another layer of protection and the Joint Response Group agree, although I understand there are economic considerations and we shouldn't forget those.

"But that extra layer at the elite end is the right thing to do, I think, as long as we can do it as it gives them more chance of completing their seasons because you can isolate people out as you need to. And it's better to know that than not, and the virus spread unnoticed."

Lower-league players have to arrive and leave in their kit. Why is that?

The current protocol state that players outside the top flight cannot shower after training or matches and - like the rest of the population - should not share cars. Some have noted that spending several hours in wet clothes while driving long-distances at night can also be perilous to a player's health...

"If everyone had their own individual shower and it was cleaned between each use, there's pretty much no risk. But the challenge is that when you go down the leagues, the facilities aren't quite as good sometimes. It's about trying to mitigate risk as always.

"We think it's probably about right that we ask kids to arrive in their gear and go home and shower and it's about right that Premiership players can shower given the set-ups at those clubs. But somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.

"It goes to the question everybody asks... why can I do this, but not that? The fundamental answer is population health. The risk to you of doing something might be minimal to you, but the more people do it, you add risk on top of risk on top of risk.

"That's a real communication challenge for us around football stadiums v pubs or soft plays v cinemas."

Okay, so why are cinemas open when football stadiums are not?

Two successful test events in September, with 300 fans at Premiership matches in Aberdeen and Dingwall, have yet to be repeated, with a pause put on any further games by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Meanwhile, cinemas are open to a limited number of customers.

All of these decisions are based on four 'harms' - the harm caused by Covid directly; the harm caused to other parts of the health service as a result; the social harm on things such as people's mental health; and the economic harm. The chief advisors for each give that advice to the First Minister and the cabinet and they make the decisions.

"With all this stuff, there's not a straightforward answer. Cinemas are very small numbers, very distanced, there's not a public transport, or policing problem, there's not people going to pubs before and after. But it's not an exact science. You can't say cinemas are safer than football stadiums.

"As you open things, there will be anomalies. You can rationalise them but fundamentally it's about the fact you can't have everything.

"But at some level you have to make choices. If the bucket of risk if full, you can't put more in it. If the bucket of risk is half empty, you can think 'right, what is the next thing to do?'. Is it soft play for kids? Is it nightclubs for students? You can't put both in the bucket at the same time."

But why is football behind other things is getting into that bucket?

Speaking to BBC Scotland on Saturday, SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster said that "it often feels football does not get a fair rub of the green" and pointed to indoor venues such as the Royal Albert Hall being allowed to admit 57% of capacity. He added: "Anybody who tells me that is not a political choice, I'm sorry I don't accept that."

"My argument would be that football got into the bucket pretty early on. What it didn't get was crowds.

"But let's be very clear, football got very special privileges to go back before hosts of other sectors. Most people are still working from home as default. Football is open, people are at work, so they got in the bucket but they didn't get everything they wanted and are pushing for now.

"I completely get the angst about crowds and people saying they've gone to Alloa every second week for their whole life and there's no risk because they'll walk there and socially distance. It really hurts me to not allow that but we have to minimise the risk."

Could we see fans back at smaller clubs first?

The test events were considered a success. People arrived, got to their seats, were distanced, left safely and were dispersed from the stadium. Professor Leitch says he looks forward to seeing further pilots, and hints that talks had taken place about having small numbers of crowds at lower-league games.

"I'm very mindful of the smaller clubs who could put together pretty strong mitigation to have small, distanced, local crowds and keep the vulnerable away. That will come back and I am an advocate for that but it's about timing.

"We haven't had that discussion fully yet with the SPFL and Scottish FA. Should they let Annan, for example, have crowds before Rangers and Celtic? There are arguments in both directions and at some point we'll trigger that but not yet, because we're still too worried about the virus."

How is the relationship between football and the authorities?

Doncaster and Scottish FA vice-president Mike Mulraney were vocal on Saturday in their belief that preventing fans returning is "political rather than clinical". So is there tension between them and the authorities? And do the latter feel like they are being strong-armed?

"The relationships are pretty good. We've got different jobs and come at it from a different angle. But so does the hospitality sector and the guy who runs Edinburgh Airport.

"It's never bad-tempered or unhappy; it's constructive. And fundamentally everybody wants the same thing. They want it slightly quicker than we think it's safe to do so but that's what I would do if I was in their seat.

"It's doesn't feel like a fight. It feels like they understand. The minister for sport and I are sports fans. Sometimes we come across as the bad guys because we are the ones slowing it down but we're doing our best to help them.

"Sports rhetoric is always turned up to 11 and, unlike other sectors, they've got wall-to-wall coverage. I'm okay with it as long as we occasionally get to give our version of the truth. People are big enough to make up their own minds about what we're saying and why we're saying it."

What news should we expect on Tuesday?

Doncaster is due to meet with sports minister Joe Fitzpatrick on Monday, and Tuesday marks the three-week review date for the pause on test events and fans returning. Will the First Minister relax the restrictions at all?

"A number of things have happened since then so I wouldn't expect any change for a few weeks. The most likely outcome will be "we'll look again in three weeks". But I'm the advisor, not the decision-maker."

Do you believe we will see stadiums at full capacity this season?

It is now over six months since a crowd bigger than 300 fans watched a football match in Scotland. Will that change in the next six months?

"I don't think we'll see full capacity stadiums this season. I think we'll see crowds before next summer but not full stadiums, I don't think."