WATCH: Trolls targeted Edinburgh woman after COVID outbreak

An Edinburgh woman is exclusively telling Forth 1 how she was targeted by online trolls for speaking out about Scotland's first COVID outbreak.

Gillian Russell suffered flu-like symptoms after fitting kilts for delegates attending an international Nike conference in the capital a year ago.

But she faced a backlash when she went public to ask why she wasn’t contact traced.

The Scottish Government insists all cases linked to the event were contact traced and reported.

WATCH: "The abuse I got was shocking. Some of it was absolutely disgusting."

Gillian told us: "I had eleven people in my store with me. It's very personal to show someone how to put a kilt on. You're almost hugging them, and you're spending a lot of time with that person.

"Finding out from a documentary that I had been put at risk still sometimes feels quite surreal because even to this day there's never been any contact. Nobody's ever said anything about why we weren't contacted at that point.

"I worked with people who had relatives that were really, really ill at the time - a friend of mine that had a parent in hospital.

"Knowing the fact that we could have maybe passed that on to someone which could have cost a life without being told the reason why was upsetting.

"There were a lot of people that we were mixing with daily. I was in the store 10 hours a day. Knowing possibly that I could have passed that on to someone and maybe caused someone to be really ill, really did get to me. It really, really upset me.

"It does still bother me thinking someone could have become really ill or could have died because I was in contact with someone and I wasn't told. That's the biggest thing for me - knowing that I could have infected others without actually realising it.

"The abuse that I got from actually coming forward and telling people that we needed to get some answers from the government to say why were we not contacted was shocking.

"Some of it was actually disgusting about what I was called.

"Afterwards to have the abuse, the things that were said about me on social media, just because I asked a question.

"I wasn't attacking anybody, I wasn't asking anything wrong, I just wanted to know why I wasn't told.

"I couldn't understand why people were being like that and why people couldn't understand the fact that all I wanted to know was an answer.

"I did regret it, but I'm still determined that I want to know why this happened.

"It really upset me. I am stronger coming through it, but I've still not had the answers, I've still not been told why were we not told, why were we not given the opportunity to take a test to check and see if we were ok to make sure we weren't passing it onto our loved ones?"

SCOTGOV STATEMENT:

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "All appropriate steps were taken to ensure public health was protected following the Nike conference, with more than 60 contacts traced in Scotland, and around 50 others traced in England.

"All of the cases linked to this event were assessed by their close contact, or contact with conference delegates who tested positive after the event so public health authorities were satisfied that there was minimal infection risk.

"All Scottish cases linked to this event were contact traced and reported in details of the number of cases in Scotland at the time.

"While the Nike conference in Edinburgh was one of several routes by which COVID-19 came to Scotland, the University of Glasgow’s genome sequencing report confirms that the local public health response was effective in managing and containing spread of that particular strain of COVID-19 in Scotland.

"We have committed to an inquiry that will cover all aspect of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland."

Gillian Russell added: "I do hope that the questions will still be asked going forward, and that there will be a proper inquest into what happened throughout the whole of the pandemic, because it's not going to be just me that's got these questions.

"There's going to be a lot of people that have got questions similar to why were we put at risk?

"There has to be an inquiry about everything that's happened, everything mistake that's happened, because it's the only way that any government is going to learn and going to know how to deal with something in the future.

"People like me have to have a voice at that, because we are the people who were affected."