NO matter how much the Scottish Government denies it, no matter how much bluster there is, it’s hard to see anything other than a cover-up when it comes to the coronavirus outbreak in Edinburgh at the end of February.

Here’s the order of events: the Scottish Government confirmed the country’s first case of coronavirus on March 1. The case was in Tayside.

On Monday May 11 – some considerable time after the confirmation of the first case – investigative journalists with BBC Scotland uncovered that the outbreak had actually began in Edinburgh on February 26 and 27.

The outbreak started at a conference for the company Nike. Around 70 employees from across the world were at the Hilton Carlton. One delegate brought the virus into Edinburgh and infected other Nike employees – who then went to their own home countries. At least 25 people were infected, eight lived in Scotland.

Health authorities knew of the outbreak by March 2 but the public wasn’t told. Nike closed its stores around the UK and across the world for deep cleans.

The Scottish Government said those who were at risk were identified and their close contacts were traced. However, one guest who stayed at the hotel, and had been in close contact with Nike delegates, says he wasn’t contact traced by officials.

On Tuesday, the day after the BBC’s revelations came to light, the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, was questioned about allegations of cover up by journalists during her coronavirus briefing at St Andrew’s House.

She described cover-up claims as “complete and utter nonsense” and “highly politicised nonsense”. Sturgeon insisted “all appropriate steps were taken” over the outbreak at the Nike conference in February.

According to the First Minister, information about the outbreak wasn’t made public because it would potentially have breached patient confidentiality by identifying some of those involved.

It was “not the case” that authorities knew about the outbreak while the conference was ongoing. All the cases that were later confirmed were included in daily totals published by the Government.

“Had there been more information about that event put into the public domain at the time, that would not have changed the steps that were taken to protect public health,” Sturgeon said.

The First Minister also said she’s been “open and transparent with the public”.

There’s much to unravel in these events.

Firstly, the Scottish Government allowed a falsehood to go into the public domain. If not for the hard work of reporters this falsehood would have eventually made its way into the history books, distorting fact and truth forever.

Look anywhere online and you’ll be told Scotland had its first coronavirus case on March 1. We now know that’s not true. For instance, the wikipedia page entitled ‘Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland’ opens saying – as of Wednesday May 13: “The Covid-19 pandemic was first confirmed to have spread to Scotland on 1 March 2020 with the positive Covid-19 test of a male Tayside resident who had recently travelled between Scotland and northern Italy.”

Truth matters – especially at a time of crisis. The Scottish Government bears responsibility for skewed facts in the public domain.

The phrase "cover up" is much overused, and often wielded inappropriately. A cover up is an attempt to conceal information from the public of a wrongdoing, an error or a crime. A cover up can be passive – with information simply withheld because it isn’t asked for, or it can be active with deliberate lies told.

Nobody is saying the Scottish Government engaged in an active cover up to hide a crime from the public – but it’s hard to avoid the perception that there was a passive cover up over what may have been an error or misjudgement.

The inescapable logic is this: if there was no cover up then why not tell the public as soon as the Government became aware of the Edinburgh outbreak? Why did the BBC end up delivering the news, not Nicola Sturgeon or one of her ministers or scientific advisers?

It’s also hard to see how information about the outbreak couldn’t have been managed or redacted in such a way that the truth was given to the public, while individuals and their identities and health details were still protected.

The First Minister’s dismissal of questions about a cover-up as “highly politicised nonsense” was a misstep. The public will not think of this as nonsense. The public will think: does this mean lives could have been saved, does this mean lives were lost – both at home and abroad? A man at the hotel says he was not contact traced after all.

And the use of the words “highly politicised” felt like a dog whistle to nationalists. As if the criticism and the questions were somehow a unionist attack on the SNP Government.

Most of all, what this episode damages is the First Minister’s claims of transparency. She has set her reputation by trust. But her Government has not been transparent here with the public.

If the First Minister wishes to restore trust and a belief in transparency then she should publish all material held by the Scottish Government on the Edinburgh outbreak as quickly as possible, in a form which protects individuals’ privacy.

There’s also a feeling that if these events were playing out in England, rather than Scotland, the outcry would be much more severe. Boris Johnson has rightly been put under exceptional scrutiny for his handling of coronavirus – particularly here at home by the Scottish press. He has not been given an easy ride.

The newspaper investigations into the Prime Minister’s missed Cobra meetings were, rightly, met with anger. SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford described it as “jaw-dropping” negligence. There was a much more muted response here to newspaper investigations which showed Nicola Sturgeon also did not attend Cobra meetings.

Scotland must not hold itself to lower standards than the UK. Yes voters – of whom I’m one – sometimes talk of the "Scottish cringe", the idea that some Scots see Scotland as too wee, too poor, to stand on its own two feet.

It’s often thin-skinned nationalists, however, who display this failing at its worst. Nothing exemplifies the so-called Scottish cringe more than the inability to accept criticism and scrutiny of your own government, leaders and country.

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