HUMZA Yousaf has said there is "absolutely a risk of Covid cases rising" as a result of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow next week.
The Health Secretary said the Scottish Government would do all it could to keep them to a minimum, but added "of course" they would expect cases linked to the event.
It comes as the Government's public health adviser, Professor Devi Sridhar of Edinburgh University, warned COP26 was likely to trigger a spike in infections.
She said the arrival of around 25,000 people from around the world would “make Covid worse for Scotland” and “increase the risk of further restrictions”.
On BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show, Mr Yousaf was asked about COP26’s effect on Covid.
He said: “Of course we’d expect there to be positive cases that are linked to COP, but we are also very, very assured by the protocols we’ve got in place to isolate those cases as best we possibly can.”
Asked if he expected a COP26-related Covid spike to lead to a reintroduction of restrictions, Mr Yousaf said: “We’ll do everything we can to make sure we keep [cases] to a minimum.
“But there’s no public health expert in the world who would say there’s no risk, in the midst of a global pandemic, to have tens of thousands of people descending onto largely one city.
“So there is absolutely a risk of Covid cases rising thereafter, but we’ll do everything we can to mitigate that.”
The move has sparked some people on social media to call for the summit to be scrapped or postponed.
The summit has already been rescheduled from November 2020 because of the pandemic
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Yousaf says COP26 will worsen Covid but more restrictions still avoidable
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