THE Scottish panel informing the country’s exit strategy from the Covid-19 lockdown has taken formal help from a think-tank advising the German government.

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon said that the Scottish Government will “not rush” into an exit strategy as she announced 12 further coronavirus deaths.

The First Minister’s message was delivered amid a warning from an Oxford University professor that the lockdown was likely to do more damage than the pandemic itself.

Ms Sturgeon also warned football fans they shouldn’t expect to be able to go to professional fixtures “any time soon”.

She added that matches being played behind closed doors should be “very carefully considered”.

At Westminster, the UK Government signalled that any substantial lifting of the lockdown restrictions was months rather than weeks away as it warned of the dangers of a “second peak” of the virus, which could deepen Britain’s health and economic crisis even further.

Last month, Ms Sturgeon set up a new expert group that would provide additional and tailored advice for Scotland from scientific experts on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The panel’s analysis is sitting alongside that of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), which is informing the four-nation approach to the pandemic across the UK. The First Minister said last week that it is too early for the findings to be made public by the group, led by Professor Andrew Morris, professor of medicine at Edinburgh University.

The panel has quizzed “a member of the think-tank group advising the German government”, which has been leading the way in Europe for mass testing.

The topics covered in the session included plans for “contact tracing”, as well as “public opinion and compliance in Germany”, along with testing capacity and “lockdown exit strategies under consideration”.

The think-tank has now been commissioned with providing advice on the current lockdown arrangements and the next steps.

Addressing the media yesterday, the First Minister confirmed that a total of 915 patients have now died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus, up from 903 on Sunday. Ms Sturgeon said 8,450 people have now tested positive for the virus in Scotland, an increase of 263 from 8,187 from the previous day.

There are 169 people in intensive care with confirmed coronavirus or Covid-19 symptoms, a decrease of five on Sunday, while 1,809 people are in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19.

“Towards the end of this week I will set out some of the factors that will guide our thinking for the future,” the First Minister said.

But the “initial version of this work” will not set out which measures will be lifted and when, she said.

Ms Sturgeon added: “We are simply not yet in a position to take

those decisions in a properly informed way and I will not rush to do anything that could risk resurgence of this virus, because to do that would risk overwhelming the National Health Service and it would put many more lives at risk.”

She said the Scottish Government will set out its objective to “continue to suppress the virus while considering how even we can even gradually restore a semblance of normality to everyday life” – but some restrictions on everyday life will continue for “a while to come”.

In Germany, where the same experts have been advising the Scottish Government, some restrictions have been lifted by authorities as the country tries to reboot the economy.

The Scottish Government declined to name the think-tank that took part in the discussion, but the Robert Koch Institute is the German Government’s main public health advisory body. The German government is also being advised by the Leopoldina Science Association and the German Ethikrat.

Germany started gradually lifting the lockdown yesterday – with smaller shops re-opening and some schools due to welcome pupils again on May 4 – but mass gatherings will remain banned.

Shops with a surface area of up to

800 square metres were being allowed to re-open yesterday, along with car showrooms, bike shops and bookshops of any size, under an agreement reached last week between the federal and state governments.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, told n-tv television that big shops “draw large numbers of people into the city centre, they have high customer numbers and that isn’t possible in the first step”.

The German government believes it has managed to curb the outbreak due to social distancing measures introduced after an early surge in cases.

The strategy mirrors the words of Scotland’s national clinical director, Jason Leitch, who has indicated that the number of people each person infects, the R-naught number, must remain low before any lockdown measures can be lifted.

The Robert Koch Institute has revealed that Germany’s R-naught number has dropped to 0.7, meaning that each person carrying the virus was now, on average, infecting less than one other person.

If Scotland is to follow Germany’s path out of the lockdown, mass testing is likely to play a key role – with Ms Sturgeon suggesting “test, trace and isolate” will form part of any future strategy.

The UK Government’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has admitted that Germany “got ahead” with testing and that “there’s a lot to learn from that” – while the country’s response has been routinely praised.

Scotland’s interim chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith, said: “There’s not one country that we are looking at but many, many countries, to see what we can learn from a variety of different approaches.

“My advisory group of scientists is currently examining the strategies that are currently being deployed across more than a dozen different areas to see exactly what the impacts that those strategies are having in those countries – and also whether they would be able and feasible to be applied within our own cultures in Scotland as well.

“I think it would be wrong to give the impression that we are only looking at one country but we are trying to learn form the international community in

There’s not one country that we are looking at but many, many countries, to see what we can learn from a variety of approaches

terms of what might work as we move towards the next phase.”

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the centre for evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, said the lockdown was likely to do more damage than coronavirus itself.

The practising GP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that not enough testing had been carried out.

He said: “The key is no-one has really understood how many people actually have the infection.

“In fact, the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the damaging effect of coronavirus.”

The UK Government’s next review of the lockdown is expected on May 7 with the latest advice from SAGE due by the end of the month.

“The big concern is a second peak,” declared a Downing St spokesman. “That is what ultimately will do the most damage to health and the most damage to the economy. If you move too quickly, then the virus could begin to spread exponentially again.

“The public will expect us to do everything we can to stop the spread of the virus and protect lives,” he added.

At the daily Downing Street briefing, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said it would be “wrong” to speculate about lifting restrictions at this stage and people should continue to focus on abiding by the restrictions.