Nicola Sturgeon longing to hug her parents after lockdown
Scotland's First Minister had an exclusive hour-long chat with Ewan Cameron
Last updated 3rd Apr 2020
Nicola Sturgeon admitted she is struggling with the family impact of the Covid-19 lockdown during a candid interview on Forth 1 this morning.
Scotland's First Minister spoke exclusively with Ewan Cameron for an hour and said the first thing she will do when restrictions are relaxed is hug her parents.
You can listen again following the link on the homepage of this website.
The SNP leader's emotion was clear as she explained she's finding it tough to only be able to see family through a screen.
She told our listeners: "Like most people, I'm trying to keep in touch with my family over FaceTime and Skype, whereas previously we would've phoned each other because we could (also) go and see each other.'' she said.
"I'm doing all these things as well. But giving my mum and dad a hug, and hug my niece and go and wish my nephew a proper happy birthday, see my mother-in-law who's in a particularly vulnerable position ...
"All these things, just like everybody else, I really look forward to do - you're going to make me emotional now.''
She continued: "My sister is a front-line health worker, so is my sister-in-law, and they say to me, 'you must be really stressed right now with this', but what I'm thinking is actually however tough my job is, it's nothing compared to yours and what people on the front-line are doing.
"I worry about them because I know how difficult it is and I know that everyone who has a family member working in care or the NHS right now has that added anxiety.
"I absolutely identify with that because I have it too."
The First Minister insists she can't put a timescale on when the lockdown will end, adding: "It was always going to take two or three weeks to know what impact these measures are having on the spread of the virus.
"We need to have that information and that data before we start making assessments of how long this is likely to last.
"I can't tell people this is likely to end anytime soon - certainly not in a week, two weeks or three weeks.
"I know that's really hard for people to hear but I can't just tell people what that want to hear.
"None of us, me included, have ever faced a situation like this before so we're doing the best we can for the best reasons."
Following excitement on social media about social mixing when the lockdown is over, Sturgeon underlined it's unlikely to be the case that pubs and restaurants will be declared open again at once allowing everyone to gather immediately.
"I'd rather set out that information to people when we know clearly what the phasing is going to be, rather than just make it up," she went on.
"We're in too serious a situation to speculate and people have to understand that."
The First Minister was also keen to nullify the suggestion that Scotland could come out of the crisis sooner than our neighbours south of the border.
She said: "We are at an earlier stage of the virus spread than England as a whole but London in particular.
"That doesn't mean we're on a different path, it just means we're at an earlier stage of that path.
"I'm hopeful that it will turn out to be the case that because the stage at which these lockdown measures were applied was at a time when Scotland was at an earlier point of the path, then it may mean that our peak of this virus is lower than it will be in other parts of the UK.
"That's not because we've been following radically different strategies or are on a fundamentally different path, it's just because we applied these lockdown measures at an earlier stage of the infection curve.
"Case numbers are proportionately lower, deaths are lower, but let's not lull ourselves into a false sense of security around that.
"Hopefully what we've done and when we did it will mean our peak will be lower, but we don't know that yet."