Scotland’s chief medical officer will no longer attend press briefings after coming under fire for twice flouting the UK’s lockdown rules in order to visit her holiday home on the coast.
Dr Catherine Calderwood was publicly imploring Scots to adhere to the ‘stay at home’ measures, while privately she was travelling to the east coast of Scotland to visit her second home at weekends.
The medical chief was photographed with her family near a coastal retreat in Earlsferry and the images were published in The Scottish Sun late on Saturday.
Earlier this week, the 51-year-old tweeted a photo of her family at their home in Edinburgh as they clapped for National Health Service staff working on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis. Earlsferry is more than an hour’s drive from Edinburgh.
The revelations prompted the police to visit Dr Calderwood’s home and issue her with a warning. “The legal instructions on not leaving your home without a reasonable excuse apply to everyone,” Scotland’s Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said in a statement.
Calum Steele, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, was even more scathing in his comments, saying that Calderwood had made policing the pandemic more difficult.
“In defending the indefensible has the Scottish Government not just thrown the CMO under the bus? Checking on a 2nd home is not one of the prescribed reasonable excuses,” he tweeted.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Sunday that Dr Calderwood is withdrawing from daily media briefings due to the furore, and that the government advertising campaign featuring the medic will also be revised. However, Sturgeon said that she will remain in her post, advising the Scottish Government, despite calls for her resignation.
Dr Catherine Calderwood apologized for her actions on Sunday, saying her reasons for visiting the house were “not legitimate” and that she is “truly sorry for not following advice she gave to others”.
