Dear Hyndland Families,

I appreciate that the vast majority of you will not have had the opportunity to watch the FM’s announcement on Friday 10th of December, so am writing to give you a brief update:

• She painted a clear picture about the rate of increase in infections with the Omicron variant. A briefing paper is available on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/omicron-scotland-evidence-paper/
• Ms Sturgeon advised that work Christmas parties should be deferred.
• She warned that difficult decisions were likely to be ahead.
• From tomorrow, a significant change to contact tracing and isolation will take effect:
  • • Household contacts of any PCR confirmed case need to isolate for 10 days irrespective of vaccination status or their own PCR test result.
    • Some exemptions will be made for critical services. (It is not clear yet whether any exemption will apply to school staff nor what shape such an exemption would take. As soon as there is more information about this, we will share this with our community .)
    • Non-household contacts are asked to isolate until they receive a PCR test result. They can leave isolation if they have a negative result AND are double vaccinated.

While clearly an unwelcome development with huge implications for all of us, and for staffing in many workplaces including schools, I hope this update is helpful and we will provide further updates as appropriate.

Kind regards
The Hyndland Team