Scotland's virus numbers are already climbing with a week left until Christmas

No sooner had the plan for a five-day easing been signed off by the four governments than the situation went drastically downhill, first with Wales, then England, and now Northern Ireland getting set to plunge straight back into lockdown as soon as the turkey leftovers are cleared away.

Scotland finds itself in a better position than most of the UK, but even here cases are rising again overall and there are already hints of a post-Christmas crackdown with a review of Covid levels due on Tuesday couched as a key "decision-making moment" by Deputy First Minister John Swinney.

It is to our benefit that we were the last of the four nations to exit our version of lockdown, with the lifting of Level 4 restrictions in parts of the country only a week ago, but that just gives us more breathing space.

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The problem., as public health experts warned from the outset, is that the virus never went away and was certainly not going to take a few days off for Christmas.

But having drawn up the UK's Christmas Covid break - partly from a fear that the public would flout a ban anyway - politicians have tied their own hands.

Rather than ruling out household get togethers, they are backtracking: in Scotland, families are urged to spend no more than one day together instead of the the original allowance of five, to avoid staying overnight, and frankly to "think very carefully" about whether it's worth the risk at all.

In Wales, the household limit has shrunk from up to three to a maximum of two - although a third household can join the bubble if they are a person who lives alone.

England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, logically appealed to the public to consider how close mass vaccination could be, potentially clearing a path to much safer reunions with loved ones by Spring.

“We are tantalisingly close to the stage where anybody who gets into trouble as a result of this Christmas will be protected in the very near future,” he said.

“It is very important people think about that.”

In the US, the healthcare system is continuing to pick up the pieces three weeks after Thanksgiving, with new hospital admissions rising to record heights for a 19th day in a row on Thursday.

Across New York state, the number of people in hospital with Covid reached 6,147 - a number last seen in mid-May - while in California there were a record 14,283 infected patients in hospital.

In Scotland, the picture is uneven.

The Greater Glasgow and Clyde region is still feeling the impact of Level 4 restrictions, with the average number of new infections down 37% in the two weeks to Wednesday December 16, compared to a slower decline of 28% over the two previous weeks.

Right now, the region is reporting around 173 cases a day on average compared to a peak of 475 a day in the seven days to October 26.

The position in Glasgow city has stabilised exactly at the same time that the situation in Edinburgh and Aberdeen has begun to spiral upwards.

Since December 1, the prevalence of the virus in Glasgow has gone from 152 cases per 100,000 to 147 per 100,000 by December 14, although the test positivity rate still remains stubbornly high at 6.4% - an indicator that things are not entirely under control.

READ MORE: What Scotland should learn from the disastrous unravelling of Wales' firebreak 'success'

Over the same period, the virus rate in Edinburgh - which has been in Tier 3 since the system was enacted on November 2 - has nearly doubled from 64 to 110 cases per 100,000, while in Aberdeen - which started out on Level 2 but was escalated in Level 3 yesterday - the prevalence of coronavirus has surged from 62 to 140 cases per 100,000.

The good news is that, for now, hospital admissions for Covid are continuing to fall in Scotland (they roughly halved between October 26 and December 13) but that won't last.

After a long year of coronavirus, it should not have come as a surprise to anyone that cases would rebound as soon as restrictions are lifted.

We spent four months, from mid-March to mid-July, living under household visiting bans, hospitality closures, working from home, staying in our council areas, and limiting social interaction to outdoor spaces and Zoom calls.

In the process, we came close to eliminating the virus in Scotland. That was the moment to reap lasting rewards from lockdown: if we had been strict about quarantining people after foreign travel, if we had tested more and contact traced faster, if people could have been induced or enabled to be more compliant with requirements to self-isolate (in some countries, where compliance is high, people get automatic daily payments). We failed.

In New Zealand, Christmas can go ahead as normal - as long as anyone flying in from overseas to visit relatives spends their first 14 days in one of the country's government-overseen isolation hotels. They will only be allowed to leave after testing negative twice, on days three and 12 of their stay.

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Meanwhile in the UK, with a vaccine on the horizon and public patience flagging, a return to a truly long-term lockdown like we experienced in wave one is not on the cards.

But that also means that the prevalence of the virus is never going to be driven so low that normal life can resume before the oldest and most vulnerable in population have been inoculated.

Mass testing might help detect more cases, but it can only really be effective if people trust the tests' accuracy enough to self-isolate. And if compliance is poor with PCR tests, what are the prospects with lateral flow?

As Prof Whitty notes, vaccination is near, and thank goodness.

So have yourselves a merry little Christmas. At least there are still chocolate oranges.