I was quite impressed by Shishin Jha's lecture yesterday and he brought up some very important points and as you will realize most things in life when you are trying to communicate, if there is something important that you want to say you need to repeat it. You need to repeat it as often as it takes to get that point across whether it is your seminar, whether it is your MTP report that you are writing or whatever if there is a point which is really important, you have to keep repeating it, otherwise what happens is that it is there in the text, someone reads it they might miss it or they might miss the importance of it and you feel that if it is really important he will repeat it again.  You will think that if it is important we will call you again, third time you will pick it up and then find you got it, same thing in many things if something is important you need to repeat it and I have learnt this from masters, when I was at Oxford there was a head of department was a gentleman called C. A. R. Hoar H. O. A. R. E. He is if you like the gods of computer science, one of the people who are right up there who actually established the subject of computer science as mathematically rigorous and things like that. In fact, I would recommend that you read one of his papers called the Emperor's Old Clothes. How many of you have heard about that paper, it is called the Emperor's Old Clothes, it is his Turing Award lecture in 1981, where he talked about his journey in computer science. But what I would like to just review this morning is a few of the points which you thought were important yesterday, a few of the points that you thought were important yesterday in yesterday's talk. Like it is quite interesting the facts that Shishir mentioned, 25,000 journals, 1.5 million articles every year, one of those might be yours, how do you get that article noticed? Especially when there are 1 million authors, if there are 1 million authors writing scientific papers how do you get yourself noticed amongst that large community?  So what are the important elements that he mentioned in formal writing, how should it be? Simple. What else? You are reading it out. What else? Coherent. One very important point that struck me very, very hard, generous. What does generous mean? Generous, what does it mean? It is very important, that point is very, very important. You do not realize the importance of it now, but as time goes on you realize more. I will give you an instance of this. One paper writing style I have learned from Professor Hor is, you know, when often you find students are writing, they will write, I did this, then I did that, then I found this, this, this and this happened and then I surmised that this is the rule that might be holding and then I am presenting the results and all that kind of stuff. And then the same thing if you hear in a slightly different way, he is saying exactly the same thing. If we do this then we notice this and we notice that we can presume that this holds and if we tabulate the results, we see a graph with these interesting properties. What is the difference in the two styles? Yeah, the first is egotistic. I am great, look what I have discovered, let me share with you kind of thing, you know. The second style is V. Now, this is the man who is up there, Tony Hor, when he writes, he writes V. So, he is saying that we are both the same level. And when he says that we are both the same level, we actually rise to that level. This is a very, very important thing.  But when you have a lot of achievements, you want to share.  So, this communication skills course is not so much about writing and reading and so on.  And it will manifest itself in your persona in all sorts of ways.  And you start behaving bichara also and it shows in your writing, it shows in your speech, it shows in everything. You, you kind of meditate on this thing. That's why many of these sadhus and all that, some of them meditate on what? A deer skin. Some of them meditate on a tiger skin. When he wants power, he meditates on a tiger skin. Why? Because constantly he is believing that he is getting the properties of a tiger. When you start believing in yourself and you start believing all these things that you are strong and powerful, you actually start projecting it. So, anyway, this is a behind the scenes kind of look. So, these things are very important. What else? Generous. So, generous is not only being generous to the reader, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are also intelligent. You are believing that they are intelligent. So, you are being generous. And if you are quoting somebody else, if you borrowed from somebody else, right, my respect will go up for you if you are acknowledging that, look, I am not that great that I have thought everything myself. I am actually standing on the shoulders of other people who have done this work. That doesn't belittle you. It doesn't make you seem less. It makes you seem more precise. It makes you seem more generous. It makes you feel more honest. You appear much more honest when you candidly say that, look, this is not my job. This is his job. But I have added this to it. In fact, you appear much smarter in the process. So, don't think by passing off somebody else's work as part of your thinking. You actually appear great because we know what to expect.  And the honesty is a quality which is the most important. When we look for people to work with, say, in a team, right, what do you look for? Same thing is the faculty looks for. Same thing everybody else. Same thing the world looks for outside. What is the good quality of a team member? We will be dividing you up into teams of six, right, to work on your project. But what are the qualities that you look for? Pardon? Do their own work. That means they should work hardworking. What else? Honesty. If he's not done the work, he says that he's not done it and he tries to. Or doesn't pass off this guy's work as his own work. Taking responsibility. So, there are a number of other points. If you just review your notes yesterday, right, I would say that two other points here are important, right, and rigor. That you don't make loose claims. That you are rigorous in your thinking. You just... One more important thing. There's another thing saying specificity, right? The way you can tell a student's way of thinking, apart from a professional or a faculty or more advanced student, is that you will never use words like what? Most. This system is much better than that system. This system is very fast, right? You don't use vague words like that. You will say precise. The system is 20% better than that, right? Or it finds 10% more errors than this way of compiling the language and stuff like that. So, you have to be precise and quantitative wherever you can, right? So, anyway, these are just a few points that came up while reviewing yesterday's lecture. And what we'll do is that we'll put up some pointers to interesting papers. I'll just take two minutes more, Prakash. And one other very important point I came up with yesterday was writing to encounter doubts, to face your doubts, right? What does that mean? Doubt is very creative. Doubt is very interesting. Doubt is where all research happens. Doubt is where creative things happen, change happens. If you don't have doubt, then you know everything and you won't change, right? Where you have doubt, there's a possibility of change. In fact, this whole factory that we have here called IIT is a factory of doubt, basically. That's where we create. We enjoy doubt. We revel in doubt because wherever there's doubt, we have a role to play. Where there's no doubt, then you go to industry. That's what industry is about. Industry doesn't like doubt.  Doubt makes them feel insecure. Am I doing the right thing? Do I have the right product? Am I marketing in the right way and so on? Well, here we thrive on doubt. We create doubt where there is none. I'll give you an example. One very good PhD was a student of mine, Sameer Sasarapudde. We had this language that we used to teach, a reconfigurable computing language on the embedded systems course called Handel C. And I thought this was the greatest language you could do. You could build hardware using a C type of language. And you can do parallel processing in it at the gate level. So you compile this C-like program to an FPGA. And he had his own thing. He said, sir, I don't know why we have to do things this way. Why can't the compiler do all this work and decide where to parallelize? Why do I have to? So he planted a doubt in our head. And out of that doubt came a beautiful PhD and he's got a wonderful job with synopsis, which now he's going other places and stuff like that. So the doubt opens. So all of you in your seminar and your MTP are going to be attempting to create doubt. Doubt in your situation is very healthy because doubt is asking a question. Your job is to question and to create doubt. You should not swallow anything that a paper says. They might have made some mistakes or overlooked some results or misinterpreted some results and they've got away with it.  That's the whole point of an MTP. Instilling doubt and trying to relate to that. Doubt is also useful in another context. If you have some uljans, like you have choices in life, I can do this, I can do that, I can do that. And you can't decide which is the right one. Whether it's this person, I should go and marry that person, you can't decide. This job, that job, it's like comparing apples with oranges. You cannot compare them, they're not on the same scale. Someone's good at this, someone's good at that. Your heart is wanting this, which is the right way to do things. I used to find a very interesting way of resolving these things. When I was a student, I used to be very close to my nana, my grandfather. He was a very erudite man, very learned and stuff like that. And I used to write a letter to him. In the writing of that letter, I would express all my doubts and reason them out. And in the process, a lot of doubts would get resolved. And eventually, you didn't have to mail that letter after that. The letter had done its work. This was especially because I was abroad in those days and anything that you send back, which is slightly negative, everybody gets very worried. I'm sure you have the same story to tell. So you write it down, and then you confront everything and deal with it. Similarly, now you'll find, when you're looking around your seminar topics and so on, what you're trying to do is trying to find doubts, trying to find gaps in the existing knowledge. That's the way you should be doing your reading. So that's why we gave you that quick exercise also. You read a, you saw a TED Talk. You did a summary of it. And you'll notice we've not given you much time to kind of react to it. How many of you have been able to write a critique yet? The submission deadline is tonight. Don't sort of go to town and spend too much time over it. Just write an initial reaction. The reason we want that document is that in the next class, you can proofread it. So don't spend one week thinking about it and writing it up. You'll have enough time to do that in the project that you're doing. So that's it about doubt and fine. Then you talk about plagiarism and things like that. See, that happens when you think that you're weak, that you're not fast enough, you're not good enough, you can't think well enough and stuff like that, and then you borrow from other places and present the work as your own. As I said, if you repeat that mantra that I'm strong, I'm kind, I'm generous and creative, just repeat it to yourself morning and evening. You'll find that you'll have a change happening and you'll think very differently. So we'll get on with the class and we stopped halfway last time in correcting the proof. What we'll do in this class is that we'll complete that exercise and then would you believe it, Prakash has some more information to share with you about the use of comma. We take it for granted, it seems a very small thing, but not when you actually use these things.  So it's very good to master these details. So we'll go with this and in the next class, we'll have two things going. One is we'll do the proofreading of the documents that you submit tonight and we'll continue with a few of those videos. We wanted to complete that, your video record if you like, because then you can compare and contrast afterwards. Thanks. Morning everybody.  So we had come part of the way. How far had we come? Up to which line number we had come? What was the last line number we checked? 25. Is it visible? So we are at line 25. The second problem, the spelling of second is wrong because there is r extra. So this says delete and close and problem b is missing. b is missing is to make corrections by using. Even corrections using is also correct English, but it should be by using the marks and symbols. This device spelling is wrong. So it says s over here by professional proofreaders. The spelling of professional is wrong. It is written as p-r-o double f. It should be p-r-o-f-e double s-i-o-n. So one f is cancelled here. This is delete and after s, we add another s. Proofreaders, then any type setter will understand. This then should be that. That any type setter will understand. So n is crossed and we have put t there. The third and most difficult, after third we have put an m-dash to highlight the phrase which is coming next. After that phrase we have to again put an m-dash. So this says here that you put m-dash. M-dash should come like parenthesis. You cannot have a single m-dash. Most difficult problem for authors, proofreading their own works is to resist the temptation to rewrite in proofs. This is a bit technical because manuscript editor this says should be small caps and the first letter of each should be large cap. So this is too technical. You need not bother about this. No, they are on works. The previous one was words. But here now whatever you have written, works means. So you shouldn't rewrite into that. This is actually instruction to all of you. The whole passage is authors as proofreaders. So it is addressed to you. The content we haven't bothered about content we were concentrating on the form. But if you read the content, each sentence is meaningful in its own way. And this n-dash should be put here. Can be reduced in size is not required because reduced means in size only. And this should be joined back here. So this was the model solution you can say. So we have finished with the... You have brought your sheets back which you should submit at the end of the class. We'll be doing a statistical analysis of them and find out what is the error distribution. And after you have practiced this, that distribution should shift to the actual error count. You should come closer to detecting all the errors. So after that we come to the main topic of today's talk. That is use of commas. Many people are surprised that there is so much to learn about commas to spend one or two lectures. You might have known this. Small things make perfection. But perfection is not a small thing. So this is why we have to learn about commas because commas are the smallest elements in what we write. But they are probably the most frequent single elements. So firstly what is your impression about commas? Why do we use commas? Can anybody tell? You have learnt it in school. So you must be having some ideas about why we use commas. Pause for what? Why reading you are supposed to pause? Because these are meant for written language. Not for voicing it out. Means do they have to do with structure of the sentence or the function of the sentence? His question, his answer. He said the first one you said is to indicate pause where we pause. So normally we pause while talking. We don't pause while reading. In fact we read so fast that we don't really stop anywhere. So that means if we are speaking out the sentence where we would have paused. That is where commas are put. That is what you want to say. And the other person said to improve understanding. Yesterday you saw three examples of use of commas where in absence of commas there was a confusion. The meaning could be wrongly conceived. So that is one application of commas. That is for disambiguation. Comma in a sentence if it is likely to be misread then when you use a comma the meaning becomes clear and you don't misread. So in yesterday's lecture you saw examples of that. That is one of the applications we will see. That is almost the last application. There are other applications. So as he suggested when we are speaking a sentence we don't speak continuously. We tend to speak in packets. And when the packet ends and next packet starts there is a small gap or there is a change of intonation and that is where we put commas if we write out the sentence. So one reason we stop while speaking is for breathing because we can't speak continuously. But that is not the reason why commas are put because normally a sentence can be spoken in a single breath. So you don't need to pause for breathing. So what happens is when we conceive a sentence we conceive it in chunks of meaning like what we call phrase or clause or sentence. So sentence identification is simple because we use a full stop for that because a sentence expresses a complete thought. The next smaller element is clause. You might have done clause analysis in school. That adjective clause, noun clause, etc. So clause is a fraction of a sentence but which is also fairly meaningful. It can be almost a complete sentence. And a phrase is the next smaller group which is a group of words which by itself will not make any sense. Only when used along with other words it will make sense. And the next of course is words. So this is the hierarchy of structure of a sentence. So end of a sentence we mark with a full stop and in other places for clauses we use commas. So commas are used to separate elements used in a sentence. Those elements can be words, elements can be phrases, elements can be clauses. If you see your sheet, this is the zip version of the whole thing. So it's not very easy to read. The first column says we won't bother about the technicalities. We will go through the examples mainly. Technicalities you can read later. The elements which you are using can be either of equal rank or unequal rank. You will see the top half is or elements of equal rank and bottom half of the table is elements of unequal rank. And the second condition is unconditional use that is syntactic. That is the structure of the sentence needs the comma. And second lower half of top is conditional that is semantic means it depends on the meaning. So some of the commas depend on meaning, some of the commas don't that they are mandatory. So we will consider the top half of this page. The first row is it says conventions. If you want to refer the type of comma it is by convention. Even if you don't put it does not matter but it has been agreed that comma shall be used in these places. So and the category used is word that is between words. We are starting with the smallest element of a sentence and we see where commas are used between words. So the first is name and title. Between name and title here, Professor Isaac PhD will visit. So after Professor Isaac, Professor Isaac was a professor in computer science department. So you may not be knowing him because he was an old timer. Next is within address. The address elements like crescent is the name of the building. Then IIT is name of the institution. Hawaii is the name of the suburb. So when the type of element changes, you put comma there that the type of element type of address you are referring to had changed. These first two lines is actually one sentence. Professor Isaac PhD will visit crescent IIT Hawaii Mumbai 76. For both of them there is a single sentence. Next is geographical names. That is crescent is in Mumbai, India. Because Mumbai and India are two different categories. One is a city, one is a country. Next is within date. So if you write the date like this, that month first and then the date. Then you have to put a comma after the date because it might get mixed up with the year. If you write in continuation. So if these two numbers come together you have to put a comma. But if you write like this in the last column like 5 January 2013 then you do not have to put a comma anywhere. Because you are alternating between numbers and words. So you know these are different categories. Then these numbers are these are mathematical numbers. We are not telephone numbers or such things. So Indian ways from right hand side after first three we count thousand, then we count lakhs, then we count crores. So after that it is in steps of two. And western way is after everything. Because you have thousand, then million, then billion etc. So you have to put comma so that identifying a number becomes simple. The last column says that in telephone number you should not put commas. Because telephone number is not really a number. It is just a sequence of digits. And if you want to identify the groups then after area code and exchange code etc. You can put hyphen. Telephone number is not really a number. And in PIN code, PIN code has no punctuation. You should not put comma, full stop anything. And the six digits should be written together. You should not write as three and three. Because that is also not a number. PIN code is not a sequential number. Then next is coordinating conjunctions. So these AND, BUT, OR, NOR, FOR, SO, YET. These are the only seven conjunctions. Coordinating conjunctions in English language. So first example is by now and pay later. So AND is coordinating between these two clauses. So before AND we have to put comma. And one variation is by now pay later where AND can be eliminated but comma cannot be eliminated. Because the clauses have to be separated. AND is understood by now pay later. It does not mean by now or pay later. Similarly BUT is many are called but few are chosen. So before BUT we have put a comma. Then OR is to be or not to be. This is a famous sentence as you know. NOR is he did not attend nor did he study. You might notice that while speaking we wait where the comma occurs. When the clause is complete we tend to wait while speaking. Similarly FOR, SO and YET, you might notice that NAND which we know from logic does not occur in ordinary language. NOR occurs but NAND does not occur in language. It is an artificial construct for mathematics and logic. About AS? AS is not a coordinating conjunction. Before AS we will go through and if you notice AS occurring anywhere then we will discuss. So words we have finished. Next is between clauses which we have finished. And this is between two elements. Coordinating could be coordinating conjunctions or binary operators. So you will have exactly two things surrounding them. You will not have more than two. So it says equal to two. Third is series like AB and C and AB or C. So in a series with three or more elements you have to put comma before the last AND or OR. Series might contain hundred things but before the last element we put AND or OR and before that we put a comma. This is a controversial comma because there are many opinions on this. But this is called an Oxford comma because Oxford University recommends and in US it is called Harvard comma. So all universities recommend because in absence of the if you write ABC you do not know whether it is A or B or C or A and B and C.  It was A and B and C. So the last one indicates you have saved so many ANDs or so many ORs. Otherwise it means that only if you do not put a comma it means only B and C. What is the relationship of A is not defined? If you do not put a comma there. Repeat. See if you write A comma B and C then A comma A is something. B and C are together you know. But you do not know that A is also together. That AND applies only between B and C. But if you put a comma before that it indicates that all previous commas were followed by ANDs. It is a short form for that so it should not be missed. Then absolute phrases after what? Yeah there should be a comma. It was missed out. So absolute phrases this is the example. His paper folded his pen closed and his eyes shut. He sat patiently. So all these three are called absolute phrases and separating absolute phrases there should be a comma. Then predicates means you have one subject and many things being said about the subject. You have subject predicate as the construction of a sentence. So he is the subject of the sentence and there are many things said about him. He could buy food, pay the bills and invest in the banks. And this also illustrates the series. So before the AND we put comma. Then nouns and pronouns. So comma, semicolon and full stop are punctuation marks. Similarly verbs. He read, land and wrote. And adverbs. Write effortlessly, systematically and correctly. The counter indication is he worked absolutely systematically. Because absolutely he is modifying the adverb systematically. Both are adverbs. But systematically modifies the verb worked. Well absolutely is an adverb modifying another adverb. That is why there is no comma between them. It is related to the next adverb. Then semantic now. So there are two types of adjectives that is coordinate or called non restrictive and cumulative. So we will just see the separate example. Rudium is a hard white metal. So why there is a comma? Yes, it is a hard metal and it is a white metal. You can put it into two sentences and put an AND there. This comma has saved the AND. So AND in the second sentence, rudium is a hard white metal. While silver is a soft white metal. Because you are talking about white metals now. Not just about metals. So now these two are together and there is no comma. Then prevent misreading is what we saw yesterday. In yesterday's class in the common lecture. So if meaning is likely to become ambiguous, you put a comma. So to amour, Joshi was a puzzle. Similarly people who can write correctly. But many times you can eliminate the comma by changing the construction. As in the last column that Joshi was a puzzle to amour. Now there is no comma required and there is no confusion. Similarly people who can write correctly are rare. This additional qualification, but now there is no comma required. So with this we have finished commas between equal elements. That is both the elements are either clauses, phrases or words. This is more like a mathematical comma. If you were to write in logic. Because in logic you do not write an equation containing different or mathematics. Containing different kinds of terms. All terms must have the same dimensions. So these are similar to that. Now next comes to the lower half. Comes to between unequal elements. And unconditional means syntactic. That because of the structure of the sentence you have to put this comma. So noun or pronoun plus past participle. So he sat patiently. His papers folded. His pen closed. His eyes shut. All these are past participle. Folded, closed and shut. And you are talking about one person only. So these past participle words or phrases have to be separated by commas. Similarly present participle. He stood silently. His legs trembling. His hands shaking. His eyes blinking. These are present participle. Now absolute phrases. Actually both examples might look similar. But absolute phrase has a separate grammatical definition. So same example might serve as both categories also. Now there if you see the construction is different. We will discuss later on. What is an absolute phrase? We will discuss later. Then next is interruption. Which is not essential to grammatical structure. It is only to enhance the meaning. So transitional phrase. That is commas on the whole account for most of the errors. Even if you remove this transition phrase the sentence will make sense. We are saying something extra. You can say commas account for most of the errors which is also true. Similarly contrasted phrase. Commas unlike other punctuation marks are widely used. Here also you can remove the contrasting phrase. Still the sentence has its own meaning. Then transitional word instead of a phrase. So commas however are often neglected. Here also you could have said commas are often neglected. Similarly contrasted word. So parenthetical elements are separated by dashes. Not hyphens. You could have ended the sentence with dashes also. Then direct address when you are speaking to somebody.  Vocative. Then that vocative is separated within the sentence. Can you explain to me sir how to punctuate? So since sir is what you are addressing the person in front. So sir has to be separated out by commas. Otherwise it will get mixed up in the sentence and sentence might mean something else. Now similarly next is might interjections. The line has got shifted. Might interjections should be moved up. So well this will do. So well is an interjection. Oh I get it. So after interjection there should be a comma. Yes and no is also should be one line up. So yes I will. After no there should be a comma. No he won't. This has been missed out. You have finished unequal syntactic commas that is unconditional commas. No there should be a comma. It was missed out while we composed it. I said there should be a comma. Yeah but it clarifies the meaning. Then conditionally depending on meaning that is introductory clause. This you will meet often. When you are describing something you will have an introductory clause and then the main sentence. So if it is introductory clause which is long. When we write for an educated reader this is an introductory clause. We should use commas properly. How do we know this is introductory clause? Because even the remaining part of the sentence makes sense by itself. The introductory clause is only adding some information about the sentence. The remaining sentence stands alone. So this is an introductory clause. But if it is short the sentence and if the reader can make out the meaning then you need not put a comma. So the same sentence we have shortened. When we write we should use commas properly. Now we need not use a comma. This is optional. Then prepositional phrase. As per grammar commas are different uses. This as per grammar is called a prepositional phrase. Having decided to use commas we should use. We should use them properly. Next we go to commas between elements. That is between clauses. So the essay which the student wrote was good. The actual sentence can be the essay was good. But we are adding information about the essay by putting another clause which the student wrote. But it can also be the paragraph with its undue length was difficult to read. It could be paragraph was difficult to read. You find out how many people I use. I think beyond the spell check it is very difficult to use the grammar checker. It does not understand the meaning. The software does not understand meaning. Which only a human being can. Then past participle. Here also shifting has occurred. In this column the entries are shifted. So past participle is commas used in proper places. Because used is a past participle means PLE. The clause is called participle clause. We had past participle and present participle above. These are the participle phrases. So commas used in proper places clarifies the meaning. Similarly present participle. This P-A-L the spelling is P-A-L because it is an adjective. And participle P-L-E was a noun. So commas dividing a sentence into meaningful elements help the reader. Here optionally the comma may be eliminated. The last column says. A positive means noun substitute. So no course not even technical writing improved the student's English. So not even technical writing is a whole thing becomes a noun. And the last is called adverbial. That is following the main clause. Like we are introductory clause. We have a telling clause which comes at the end of the sentence. That should also be separated. So the meaning may be guessed even if commas are missing. We could have reversed the sentence and said. Even if commas are missing meaning may be guessed. Then it would be become an introductory clause. And phrase. He checked all errors of punctuation of grammar and of construction. So these are separate phrases of grammar and of construction. So they are separated by commas. So this is about the summary of rules for commas. You need not know which rule you are using because you will be using it intuitively. You are already doing it. But if in doubt you can try to classify what is the situation. Whether you are working between equal elements and unequal elements. Or between clauses between phrases. And then you can clear your doubt. After you have done practice you do not need this sheet. But till that time we have given the sheet to everybody. And we have also given a smaller version which is on A4. You can put it in a folder and put on the wall behind your desk or something. But anytime you can have a quick reference. Yeah, yeah. The exercise which we did. That we want to collect. So you collect and send it to one place. I will just tell you. One minute. While these sheets are being collected. Now I will tell you the human reason for doing proofreading. We saw the technical reason. Human reason is like this. Suppose you have written a paper. And you have not bothered to proofread it. And you ask somebody to read it. That person has to take the trouble of finding out your errors. It is like having potholes or roadblocks. And he has to navigate that and get fed up. So suppose you had a guest in your house. And you have prepared something. But not tested it yourself. And you offer it to the guest that you please have it. The guest will say why do not you have it with me? You say no, no I will not have it. You have it. Then the guest will become suspicious that if it is good enough for the guest. It should be good enough for yourself also. So if you are offering something to be read by others. Then it is minimum courtesy that you should read it yourself. And you should find it acceptable. This is a human reason for doing proofreading. Besides other technical reasons. Just out of courtesy you have to proofread your own writing. So I will just remind you now. Tonight is the deadline to submit your assignment if you like. This is a summary of a TED talk. And your critique. It is very important that we get your critique. What you feel about it. So I have given some guidelines in that mail which I have sent. And this is a very important exercise. Because we need to find out who you are first. And the next step from next week. We will start taking you into the process of splitting you up into groups. And starting work on your own talk. TED talk which will be done in groups of six in the class. So we will lead you through the entire exercise. And that is what we will do until the end of the semester. So do give that document to us by tonight. We want to look at those documents before we meet you in class on Thursday. Thanks.


Ieithaf. Welcome to the eighth meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee in 2021. I apologise for being slightly late this morning. The second agenda item this morning is a decision to take item number 5 on the consideration of evidence heard in private. Are members agreed to take agenda item number 5 in private? Yn ymdweud yma yw ymdweud yma yw ymdweud yma, nesaf y gallai defnyddio gyda llyfr i gynllunio cyfrifiadau ar yng Nghymru a Gweinidolol Cymru. I welcome to the meeting our witnesses from the Scottish Government, Grand Day Minister for Transport, Professor Jason Leitch, national clinical director, Penelope Cooper, director of Covid Coordination, and Graham Fisher, deputy director of Scottish Government legal directorate. Thank you for your attendance this morning Minister. Do you want to make any remarks before we move on to questions? I will briefly address the instruments that are being considered by the committee today in order, if that's okay. Since coming into force, the international travel regulations have been amended extensively and are contained in several instruments. The health protection coronavirus international travel and operator liability Scotland regulations 2021, SSI 2021 byddwch o'r rhan, oeddo Redwun i Ffwrdd, a chyfodwch o'r drefnidol yn gwybr y briadwyr dwyrrydol ar y sylwm pan ddysgu'r话t. Rhaid i ddweud i ddweudiaethau strategiau sy'n i ddweud i ddim yn cael ei cyfrwngu ffwrdd y roi'r mexiwn ar gyfer oedd eich gwerthegol. Mae ffwrdd y Ffwrdd ei ffwrdd ac yn cynnalol y rhan, a llinwg o'i annes. Rhaid i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i gwrdd y rhan, yng Nghymru Cymru, the First Amendment, which is SSI 2021-328, moved Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Maldives, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Turkey from the list of red countries to the list of amber countries. As Scotland and other countries continue to respond to the challenge of the pandemic, vaccines have played a key role in allowing international travel to open up to a greater extent in a safer way. For people arriving or returning to Scotland who have been vaccinated in Scotland, the option of providing evidence of being vaccinated was previously limited to showing a paper certificate. In addition to the paper and downloadable PDF version of the vaccine certificates issued by NHS Scotland, the number two amendment regulations, SSI 2021-343, enabled the NHS Scotland Covid status app to be used as proof of vaccination status. In recognition of the shifting landscape of international travel and vaccines, as well as a new framework for assessing the risk posed from other countries, the four nations collectively agreed to overhaul the international travel policy to make it more straightforward and responsive to the current public health landscape. This new travel regime, implemented by the number three regulations, SSI 2021-350, abolished the traffic light system for all but the highest risk red list countries. Travelers would, for the vast majority of cases, be subject to border health measures based on whatever they meet, whether they meet the eligible vaccinated travel criteria or not, rather than which country they have travelled from. The eligible vaccinated travelers would no longer be required to take a pre-departure test or self-isolate for 10 days upon arrival, with all others still being required to do so. Travelers arriving from a red list country regardless of vaccination status are still required to book into managed quarantine facilities, and the associated testing regime remains in place, as those countries are assessed to pose the highest risk. Other changes introduced by the instrument included accepting more countries vaccination programmes for the eligible vaccine policy, amending the obligations and carriers following the new regime. New arrangements were put in place for cruise passengers, following the restart of international cruises as well as some minor sectoral exemptions and specified competition additions. The number four regulations, SSI 2021-357, made further countries vaccination programmes eligible for this new policy in addition to recognising individuals vaccinated through the United Nations vaccine programme and allows for the EU digital Covid certificate to be used as proof of a negative pre-departure test. The number of countries on the red list was also significantly reduced to seven. The spread of delta variant across the world in its interaction with previous variants of concern means that many countries are now assessed as posing no additional height and risk to the UK from international travel. Those who remain on the red list are all in Central, South America and the Caribbean. Delta has been slower to reach that region than it has elsewhere in the world and there are still variants of concern there, particularly Lambda and Muay, where there is not yet sufficient evidence of the interaction with Delta to reduce the risk assessment. The SSI has also made a number of changes to cater for the arrivals for COP26, where bespoke travel arrangements based on public health advice have been agreed with the UK Government and UNFCCC in order to hold a successful conference in Glasgow. The number five regulations, SSI 2021-359, made further amendments to the eligible vaccinated arrival policy, including provision that an eligible vaccinated arrival will include a person who is resident in Scotland in England who is not vaccinated on medical grounds. The amendment is the outcome of the on-going review of the scope of the exemption for eligible vaccinated arrivals, where we have been particularly conscious of the qualities-based impacts of the policy, particularly in those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Further amendments are also made to clarify the position for COP participants, as well as amendments in relation to the diplomatic exemption in the regulations. I will now turn to questions, if I could ask a few questions first, if I may. The Covid-19 Committee is currently trialling an online platform for members of the public to put forward questions for the committee to put forward in evidence sessions. I will start with the member of the public's first question, and it is really about global collaborative working. Why are all countries not following the same travel rules? This person feels that, if there was a global approach, the spread of the virus could have been controlled better. I think that I should bring in the expert here, Jason Leitch. It's a really good question, genuinely, and I like your innovation. It's good. The challenge, of course, is that there are 6 billion people in the world in 200-something countries, and to manage that would be pretty much impossible. I think that, actually, the global co-operation has been outstanding and quite surprising. Certainly from my piece of the puzzle, the clinical advice bit, led by the WHO, down through each continent, the European Medicines Association, the UK-wide clinical collaboration and then the Scottish collaboration, I think has been exceptional. We've pretty much given the same advice across the whole of the UK. How governments choose to use that advice and take that advice is a matter for them, of course, and we have based that on what the WHO has said. However, the WHO has an incredibly difficult job because it has to give advice to Scotland and Zambia and Indonesia. Those have very different health systems and very different demographics, and that takes you into the travel challenges. Travel is only part of the response to the global pandemic, and it should be in every country's response, but how each country manages that varies hugely. New Zealand is clearly the poster child for international travel restrictions, and it has served it well, but it is a relatively isolated piece of the world that does not have a massive airport like Heathrow or Berlin or Chicago. I think that each country has to take the clinical principles and then apply them more locally to whatever they are going to do. The question's premise is good, but it is a little bit tricky to do globally. Thank you for that answer. If I can move on to another question. We now have the digital certification passports in place where people can download when their vaccinations took place. As we know, some people are unable to travel, particularly maybe teenagers that haven't had their vaccination and have had Covid, and then they're having a PCR test and the test is still coming up as positive, even though they had Covid weeks ago. With the digital app that we have, is it being explored that we can adapt it? For example, if somebody does get Covid, that it can go into the app, so you've had your two vaccinations, you've got Covid, say, on 1 October, because the NHS wouldn't know this if you had been pinged that you had Covid, and then you would have the history moving forward for boosters on the app. Sorry if that's a bit technical, but it's just something with people that are travelling and are unable to travel at the moment because they're coming up with a positive test even though they're not positive and they've had Covid previously, just as we move forward. This is an overstated problem, but not none. The headline is that you can still be positive 90 days after you've had Covid. That's very unusual. You're much more likely to have a PCR that's negative after just a matter of weeks, so although there are some in the literature who have still tested positive because they're still shedding dead viral particles after that 90 days, the difficulty is that we don't control other countries' entry requirements, we control our own entry requirements, so some countries demand a negative test. That puts us in a really difficult position because you can't get to those individuals a negative test. It's impossible. So until the testing technology moved on and gave us something new, we can't get those individuals a negative test, but I say again that it's a very small group and we can be ready with the technology when the policy position changes to, for instance, include testing or include previous disease, the technology would adapt to be able to do that. It wouldn't do it in 24 hours, but it could adapt. Other countries have passports, for lack of a better word, that look a bit more like that, that have testing in them. Let's remember that if nor we want a negative test, I just choose them randomly, not because there's a problem. If nor we want a negative test and somebody is still getting a positive PCR, there's nothing I can do about that. My last question, and I think that this is for yourself again, Professor Leitch, is to do with symptoms of the virus and conflicting information, which is currently in the public domain. So the British Heart Foundation updated information on their website on 22 October. They're saying that the main Covid-19 symptoms, if you're fully vaccinated, is if you've got a headache, a runny nose, sneezing or sore throat, or a loss or change to your smell. But if you're not fully vaccinated, it still includes headache, runny nose, sore throat, fever and a persistent cough. So there seems to be a bit of conflict between guidance from the UK Government and the Scottish Government to what other bodies are putting out. There are 19 symptoms of Covid-19, most of all of which you get with other diseases. So that gives us a big challenge. Unfortunately, you don't get a 10-pence piece-sized rash on your wrist that makes sure that it's Covid. You get a vague and broad set of symptoms that could be many, many other diseases. So some people only get gastrointestinal symptoms. Some people only get the loss of taste and smell. So we've got 19 roughly symptoms. We get clever people to work out which of those symptoms are most likely to give us the right balance between testing, isolation, disease, etc. That's a very difficult formula and they have stuck with the three cardinal symptoms, let's call them. Fever, cough, loss of taste and smell. Those cardinal symptoms have stayed consistent throughout the almost two years. Every few weeks they look again and they say, if we added headache into that, what would that do? How many people would have to self-isolate? How many PCR tests would have to be done and how much disease would we find? Do you see what I mean? They make a judgment. It's not an exact science, they make a judgment. The judgment has always been to this point that the cardinal symptoms should stay the same. That doesn't mean that people should ignore other symptoms and there's advice online about what to do if you have these other symptoms. The cardinal symptoms are the ones that should lead you down the PCR testing route in the United Kingdom. Everything else let's do two lateral flow tests a week and it will find you if you've got it because it will find the frequency of the testing, we'll still find the disease. Just to continue on the convener's theme about engagement with the public, one of the other issues that the public have raised with us is around COP26, coming up next week and the week after. The potential that there are up to 100,000 people converging on Glasgow, some of those going to the main conference, travelling internationally, may not have been double vaccinated and clearly there is a risk for further spread of Covid. I suppose that what the public would like to know is what are the mitigations that have been put in place to avoid further spread of Covid around COP events? Has the Scottish Government done any modelling around the potential increase in cases that we might see as a consequence of COP? Very extensive preparations for COP and a range of measures, which I'm chasing out on you for you in detail. As someone who's attended myself, I was very impressed by the range of measures that are in place, tailored to different sets of circumstances for delegates. I invite Jason to give you the full detail of that. Fundamentally, as you can imagine, we've been in the planning for this for some time. We've had a pandemic for two of the years of the planning for this. It was postponed last year, if you recall, so we had quite a lot of stuff in place for that and now here we are. It's this week. There are already delegates in the SCCC. I did a final site visit for Covid safety, let's call it, on Monday or Tuesday of this week. It is as impressive as you would expect it to be, but there weren't many human beings inside it yet, which is the variable that we're going to add principally this weekend. Three zones, to explain it quickly. The blue zone is the delegates, 26,000 of them, 14,000 at a time at a maximum inside the SCCC. Some of the headlines are a bit deceiving that at any one time in the huge complex they've trebled the space in the SCCC with temporary structures that will be up to 14,000 people. That blue zone will pretty much all be vaccinated, 90-something per cent at last count. We don't know everybody's status, but we're high numbers and the UK Government, with our help, have reached out to those who are unvaccinated from the global south and we have offered vaccine to all registered delegates. Everybody will wear a face covering except in negotiation rooms, where they're speaking, where they're in rooms like this, but walking and in other places, in social areas, apart from eating and drinking and all the exemptions, they will wear face coverings. One metre distancing as far as possible, although there are 14,000 people in the SCCC, those of you who know it, will know that there are some pinch points in there where that will be more difficult, but one metre distancing and all the hygiene measures that you would expect. There are layers of security on the way in and the kind of unique measure that isn't happening in the rest of Scotland is that you have to show a lateral flow test to get in. I'm going this afternoon again for a gold command meeting after you, after this, and I will have to show a lateral flow test that I did this morning in order to get through the first layer of security. You won't get through the first outdoor gate if you don't have a negative test from that day, not yesterday, that morning, for all delegates. I'm actually not overly concerned about the blue zone, genuinely. I can't guarantee it, but it's as secure as we could make it, given the circumstances. The green zone and the protesters and activists beyond that will have to follow the rules in place in Glasgow at the time, and we all know them. That area worries me more. We're not entirely sure where all those people are from. We have less control. We can't lateral flow test them all every day. I don't know their vaccine status, etc. That piece has always been the bit that's worried us more—large gatherings, just as you would expect. They will be subject to the same rules as you and I if we were walking down Sarchi Hill Street tomorrow. I'm very helpful in trying to understand the mitigations. The part of my question that you didn't really address was about have you done modelling. One of the issues that concerns people is, could we see a spike in cases? Could that lead to further restrictions being brought in on people in Scotland as a consequence of a spike in infections caused by COP? We've done autumn-winter modelling. It's pretty much impossible to model this. It's too complex.  The next few weeks of modelling don't show the stuff that we publish every Friday. They don't show a particular spike, but you won't get a spike from COP next Tuesday. The spike from COP either in this country or, remember, we could export virus as well as import virus, so spikes that other countries would take home wouldn't happen because of the incubation period for two or three weeks later. Our present modelling doesn't show a spike after COP, but I cannot guarantee that there won't be a spike after COP. I also can't guarantee that that would then need a reverse gear. You wouldn't expect me to be able to do that. If the First Minister asks me today what would be your advice, I'd say, let's stay where we are. This is what we should do, but if the numbers go up, that advice will change. Okay, so there is a risk, basically, is what you're saying. Oh, of course. Yeah. But there's also, yes, there's a risk. Okay, thank you. But there is also the creation of a culture and a mindset around this as well. As you've heard from the measures that are put in place, we're trying to make it very clear to everyone that we can who's participating about the measures that need to be followed, whether within COP26 itself or using public transport, whatever it is, to everyone to be mindful of essentially looking after themselves and those around them to minimise that risk. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Alex Rowley. So how's the booster jags going on? Yes, I think the booster jag process is going remarkably well. On the day that the joint committee announced booster doses, there were already hundreds of thousands of people eligible. You can't do them all in a day, it's impossible. There are tens of thousands of NHS workers around the country vaccinating people today. It's the biggest winter vaccination programme in history, and I am enormously grateful for every single volunteer in the Orkney hospital to the Queen Elizabeth hospital, for everything they've done over the last little while. We have vaccine, we have vaccinators and we'll get to you. Some of the narrative around this is plainly not correct. Your immunity doesn't stop at 24 weeks.  The joint committee said, don't give booster doses before six months because they wanted maximum benefit from elongating the time that you could get the immunity. So they said, give it from six months on and we're doing that just as quickly as we can. The present vaccines were, let me just check my numbers, we did 8 million in nine months. We're now trying to do 7.5 million in four months. It's a remarkable exercise. Nobody's ever done anything like it before. I think it's going really well. You appreciate that most MSPs will be getting correspondence coming for people, so a couple that I saw yesterday, one was that somebody went on the website and saw that the appointment in a couple of days' time, but they were still sitting waiting on their letters, so there seemed to be a problem there. I've also noticed that for the over 80s in the Cowdenbeathlock early, they're not due to be done until I think November at their GP practice, and yet the 70 upwards, they will be getting their booster before the over 80s, even though they would be more at risk. My point really is, is there a specific minister, a specific email that MSPs can be channeling through all these issues too, because it just seems you go around the houses, you go to ministers and you get a response for weeks, sometimes months.  For older people, and bear my mind, older people in their 80s and their 70s, for them this is a real worry. Is there something that we can do to try and ensure that people who are raising concerns have some place to take those concerns where they will get a response? I noticed the finger point in my direction about ministerial responses. I hope that that's not the case. In my case, I like to think that my correspondence has turned around very quickly. I'm sure you'll tell me if that's not the case. As Minister for Parliamentary Business in the last Parliament, we set up some dedicated contact points within Government. One of the problems that arose with that was, I don't mean this as a criticism of MSPs because they were trying to help their constituents and it was a pretty fraught time. We were getting the same email going to three or four different boxes, which was creating difficulty in the system. Whatever Jason says from his side in a minute, I'll mention this to the Minister for Parliamentary Business and to have a chat with health colleagues if that is deemed to be something that might be helpful and to share that with MSPs on that basis. You can be absolutely certain that I get copied into almost all of the emails that go to each MSP about each of those challenges, so I get it 139 times. We are doing our best to work our way through those challenges, and you're right. Of course, in a system where we're vaccinating 7.5 million arms, there's going to be some who get an appointment put online before they get the letter through the mail. Of course there are, so they should go to the appointment that's online if they now know when that is, and I apologise that the system isn't exactly as smooth as those would like. I know, for instance, my parents, 80 in Lanarkshire, done in Airdrie Town Hall, with their flujags could not have been smoother and not because of who their son is. And there are stories like that all over the country of it going really well and the NHS working really hard. But if there are specific issues, like your 70 versus your 80s story, that is worth investigation. I agree with you. So if you wanted to send that to me, I will get somebody to look at that for you. Okay, thanks. I think the point is that everybody understands that the NHS is under immense pressure. Staff are under too much pressure, quite frankly, and someone will have to give at some point if we don't get a hold of it. But for people in their 70s and their 80s, you do understand the worry. Can I also pick up on the death rates in Scotland? I noticed that this week, they said that in terms of the number of deaths of all causes registered in Scotland, 24 per cent more than the five-year average. Again, I know for people that have contacted me, struggling to get a GP appointment and struggling to see anybody in the medical centres, they eventually present themselves to the hospital and find out that there is cancer or someone that has moved on stages. Are you aware of that? To what extent is that an issue? Are you monitoring that? Are we going to see excess deaths coming through as a result of the fact that the community parts and other parts of our NHS are shut down? Where we are, we are trying to move forward so that the general practices are given people an appointment where they say they need an appointment because they feel ill. It is genuinely difficult. Excess mortality is a notoriously challenging statistic. It is historical, it is retrospective, it takes the years previous and it works out, please forgive the shorthand, the number of people who should have died. Then it extrapolates that forward to your next year and then you monitor how many people died. It compares the expected death rate with the actual death rate. That is a horrible way to think of it. I know that those are families and real people in my family and your family, but that is how the statistic works. Excess mortality has varied during the pandemic in every country in the world, because we have seen excess mortality. People have died of a new infectious disease. Unpicking that from those who have died because of the response to the infective disease, whether they are in India or Scotland, because of late diagnosis of cancer or a stroke or whatever else is incredibly difficult to do, so we do not know the causes of the excess mortality. Just in the last few weeks and months it has ticked up again, that is because we are in a third wave of Covid and Covid deaths are higher. Remember, in the previous five years we had no Covid deaths, so we have a new disease and we have not taken anything away that is killing people. Excess mortality will only help us historically and we will eventually get into that. Your question is about what the health service now does, partly there not for me, partly there for ministers, but I can tell you that the GP practices are open. The GP practices have been open throughout, one of the only pieces of the whole societal puzzle that has been open throughout. They have had to make some difficult choices about who to see and who to see online and who to do with phone calls, but I am hugely grateful to my colleagues in clinical general practice, their broad teams, the doctors and everybody else who have done that.  The decision about who is based on safety and the health of those individuals has to be clinical decisions made locally. I know that I mean to move on, but that is not the experience of people out there in communities. People out there in communities who are feeling ill are finding it difficult to get a face-to-face appointment. Some people... It is not the experience of the whole of the community. If it is your family that has tried to get an appointment, can you get an appointment and discover when they eventually get through into the hospital that they have got stage 2 cancer or whatever and it could have been diagnosed earlier? That is an issue that is coming up again and again. People are struggling. I understand that there was a letter sent by Dr Beust and the health secretary to GPs, but I would say to you that it is not just about clinical choices, there is a responsibility on government when people feel ill and feel the need to have a face-to-face appointment with a medical person, then it is a responsibility on government to ensure that those people can access face-to-face appointments. Surely that is the case, minister? It would also be determined by the clinical judgment of someone who has had that conversation whether it is over the telephone as well. Ultimately, the GP will make a decision based on that consultation. I recognise the point that you make, Mr Rowley, absolutely, but we are in very difficult circumstances. Good morning, Professor Leitch and Cabinet Secretary for Transport. I have various bits and pieces that keep popping up as we go through this. Two seconds while I write this last bit down. Can you also note that it is minister? Minister, sorry, yes. I did not even read your thing there. Can I go back to the very first point that was raised by the convener? That was the question from the member of the public asking about the positive. If people have had Covid in the past, why does that not show up and give them a level of ability to travel? Can I just ask for some clarification on if you have had Covid, are you scientifically confident that that gives you the same level of immunity as you would if you had had a vaccine? If it has been Covid that you have had, what length of time do you have that immunity for? We do not know and nobody knows. We do not know if vaccine immunity and natural immunity give you the same thing. We probably do not. Vaccine immunity is probably longer lasting and that is why everybody who has had Covid should have the vaccine. It is not an excuse not to get it. Immunity is enormously complex. It is not that you get one individual chemical and then you are protected for X number of times. It is a massively complicated biological mechanism with multiple cells, multiple proteins protecting you at various levels. It also varies according to the individual. If you are young, you are more likely to have a better response than if you are 90, but not always. Some 90-year-olds have a very good response. One of our challenges is that you cannot take a blood test and give the response a marks out of 10. You can only give a yes or a no to whoever has immunity or not. People who have had the disease are unlikely to catch it again soon. What we have been saying from the science is about 90 days. You do not need to test yourself again for 90 days because you are likely to get more positive than others would. However, people do get the disease twice. It is usually less severe the second time and it usually goes away quick, but it can still happen. That is why you should restart your testing after the 90-day period to check it. However, natural immunity is good and you will be somewhat protected, but you should still get your vaccine. However, following on from that point, you may have some natural immunity, but you do not have the kind of timescales that we talk about when we have a vaccine. I am merely emphasising the point that you made. Despite the fact that you may have had Covid, it is still essential to get your vaccine in order to help to protect society as a whole. Remember that the vaccine is not to the virus, so superimposing it on top of your virus that you have had is risk-free. There is no reason why you cannot have the vaccine if you have had the disease. The reason that I am pressing this issue is because I have numerous constituents who are saying to me that they have had the virus and they do not want to get the vaccine. This is the disgrace and it is an impingement on my human rights, so I needed that scientific assessment of why we are still asking people to get the vaccine. That is their choice. I would argue that that is the wrong choice for them and their families. If you have had it and you have had the vaccine, you should still be taking lateral flow tests. Just to come back on the point that Alex was making about older people, we are getting concerns about why older people are not getting their booster jag in the same way as they did before, where the vaccine programme went to the community. That is not happening now. I do not know whether you can answer that on a very local basis. It is in Perthshire, South and Rossshire. We have people who are having to travel huge distances in their mind to go and get their booster jag whereas before they could go down to the GP or whatever. I am assuming that the answer will be the same. That is a much bigger programme in a shorter period of time and therefore we are doing the best that we can. That is the fundamentals. We apologise for the compromise that you have to make. Everybody wants it yesterday at their doorstep. You have to compromise somewhere in there to get it as fast as you can, as close as you can. Unfortunately, some people will have to travel further. I was on a site visit to Orkney and Shetland 10 days ago and Orkney was doing all of its 12 to 15-year-olds in one weekend. That was the compromise that they had made. All those youngsters were going to come in a one-hour to the hospital and all be vaccinated if they wanted to. It meant that they got huge numbers, but it meant that the logistics of travel were enormously complex for some of those families. Then they will be picked up and will go out to get people who have changed their mind. It is a compromise between speed and distance. A very quick question for Graeme Deynaud. I do have to come back to you almost just in leech, but I apologise. Can the Scottish Government force GPs to take face-to-face appointments and say that they will now take all-face-to-face appointments? Can you do that? It would not be the right thing to do to force GPs to do all-face-to-face appointments. My dad does not want to go every time. Sometimes he likes a phone conversation. That is the answer that I needed. It is either a yes or a no, and I am quite happy with that answer. We talked at great length about vaccine resistance when we will come up to the vaccine passport process. I heard yesterday on the radio that there is still resistance in the 18 to 29 age group. Do we still have resistance in ethnic minorities and certain age groups that we should know about at this stage? The biggest worry for us as clinical advisers is that invincible age group who think that they are special. If you look at the most recent data, I was just going to bring it up. The most recent data suggests that pretty much everybody over 50 is done. There is a few catch-up, but pretty much everybody over 50 is done. It then falls a little in the over 40s, but not significantly. The last time I looked at the 18 to 29s, it was about 75 to 80 per cent.  That looks like a stubborn 20 per cent, because it has not moved much. We have done quite a lot of outreach to that community vaccine passport. It is part of the solution, we hope, for that cohort. We have done a lot of advertising that is invisible to the likes of the 50-year-olds like us, but inside there we have done a lot of mobile units at further education colleges, workplaces, universities and freshers weeks. We have a lot of mop-up vaccines during them, but it remains a personal choice. If they do not come forward, there is only so much we can do, but anything that MSPs can do to encourage that youngster age group who will, in the main, not have severe disease to protect themselves and others would be grateful. On the point about the role of MSPs in that, we are reliant on colleagues in the Parliament to assist us to get some of that messaging across, whether it be in that sphere or in my own area of responsibility. If you take public transport, for example, we have opened up the ferries and lifted restrictions there. We have seen a lot of outbreaks affecting ferry crews. Any kind of assistance that MSPs in this committee can provide in reinforcing the messages about the simple measures that people can take to help us to get through, as Jason referred to at this third wave, would be incredibly helpful. 78 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds have had a first dose, 67 have had a second dose. That will be catching up because they will not be ready for their second dose yet. That is, let us say, 20 per cent stubborn that we would like to get. We need to mop up that 20 per cent. One very last quick one, for you, minister, is face masks on public transport. Huge numbers of people in the local bus service in my constituency, again, are not wearing face masks. What can we do to actually get that enforced? It would surprise me if it was huge numbers. A lot from people who are coming to me. Colleagues will have different experiences. My experiences in buses have been more positive than that. We are engaged directly with the bus providers. I pay tribute to the work that they have done to support us in that. There will be examples. If you have specific examples about particular bus routes or anything like that, please bring them to me. I had a meeting with CPT just two days ago and they are doing more and more to try and encourage us. However, there is a limit to what they can do. Someone will go on the bus. The bus driver may well say, could you please put your mask on? We have had unfortunate instances of bus drivers being verbally abused for asking people to do that. Of course, there will be some people sitting on the bus who are actually medically exempt. It is just not obvious. However, if you have specific examples of any MSPs, please bring them to me and we will engage with the relevant bus provider for you. Thank you. Good morning, minister. Good morning, Professor Leitch. Just a couple of points that have been raised from constituents. The time of the change of the status of travelling to and from countries, the time of pre-empting of the warning for that, specifically people who have travelled abroad, and then the status changes while they are there and then there is the mad scramble to try and get back again. Is there a timescale or a change of timescale that perhaps does not catch these people out? I think that that was a thing large way of the past and I do recognise that description. However, if you consider the number of countries that are captured by the red list now, it is very small. I think that all the four nations have become increasingly aware of the need to try and avoid the situation like that. I think that what you are articulating there is something that has happened previously. I am not sure that it is as relevant now when there is only a small number of countries captured by that. Right now, if I was not here, I would be on a Covid-19 meeting with the rest of the nations of the UK discussing what we do next. There is a regular dialogue, and certainly in the midst of that is a recognition of that engagement with Travis to try and minimise the difficulties that have happened perhaps previously. One that I have been on for a while is the status of vaccinations from other countries and how they measure the proliferation of the vaccine in other countries into this. How can we be confident that the data that is coming out of other countries is robust? I am always wary of how we compare ourselves with other countries because the way in which they measure their status is hugely variant across the world. How can we be confident that the data that we get from other countries is robust in that sort of travel zone? I speak from a political perspective in the discussions that I have been involved in. The clinical advice that we are given is pretty extensive. Where there are degrees of doubt, that is explained to the politicians before we make such decisions. If you want to call it progress in the number of vaccines that are now deemed to be acceptable, there are still a couple that do not pass muster from our perspective. However, from the political judgment point of view, I have felt more comfortable with the explanation that was provided by our clinical advisers, who have drawn down expertise from across the globe as well, but perhaps Jason can expand on that. You are right. It is a challenge, particularly because we are trying to do it globally. It is not just European or just America, and COP has brought that into blinding light for us. We are trying to do it in two different ways. We recognise vaccines and vaccination programmes from specific countries. Those vaccination programmes have been through a rigorous exercise across the whole of the UK to say that. We started by recognising the European and the US vaccination programme, which is as robust as ours. There is another layer that says that we have to have had those vaccines. There are three or four categories of vaccines, from UK recognised, through European recognised, through WHO recognised, through not recognised at all. We have to make choices then. We give that advice, and the politicians UK-wide have to make choice about which of those are accepted or not. I do not want to use the word dangerous to try to compare ourselves with such a wide variety of approaches from around the world in terms of how we measure those who have tragically died from the disease. So separate problem, not a vaccine recognition problem, but a can you compare Covid data globally problem? That is much more difficult. If you look at the UK, for instance, the headline in the UK would be large numbers of cases, we have also done more testing than anybody else. I think that is a good thing, because that finds the disease, you are able to treat the disease, you are able to die, but that is not how our countries have chosen to deal with it. So if you just look at raw cases of country A versus the UK, you might think that country A has got away with the pandemic in a completely different way from the UK has. The reality is that they have not found the disease, they have still had the disease. So you have to be very cautious and you should go to trusted sources like the WHO who have tried to get beneath those data to try and work out what the reality is. We want to know what the pandemic has genuinely done around the world for a long time until we can look back and see what happened. That is what we are saying, because us MSPs have got to temper the way we talk to each other in the chamber. You should talk to each other however you choose, you should temper the way you speak to me, that would be a different problem. I think that one of the other things that has been raised with me from NHS professionals is the pressure on the NHS from absenteeism for those who have been pinged or are getting regularly pinged by track and trace. I think that I have very specific cases around neonatal units where they are supposed to be 12 on duty and there are only three. That is inherently dangerous. That relates to the impact of non-Covid-related incidents. I do not know where we are with that and how we are keeping top of that and how we are measuring that. I do not have the actual absence data. I looked briefly. I do not think that I have it. We can absolutely get you. Last time I saw it, which was probably last week, it was average. However, you highlight the problem with looking at average absentee data. Average absentee data is across 183,000 employees across just the NHS system. Underneath that, you have very specific pinch points such as paediatric intensive care, such as a dental practice that only has four people in it or whatever. Of course, there it is more challenging. There is nothing on my radar that says that there is a particular workforce challenge other than the general workforce challenge that we have everywhere about a specific unit. That would get raised through health board up the way and it would eventually reach us if there were a real problem. We have mutual aid in place for really fragile services like paediatric intensive care. We have two paediatric intensive care units in the country. They share staff if they have to. They can share cots if they have to so people can move. There are mechanisms in place to manage that. I do not know of any particular challenges that are self-isolation. The self-isolation rules have changed relatively recently to allow a little bit more flexibility for health and care workers if they are vaccinated. As I said, I am not looking at across the country. I am only talking about my particular area where there seems to be a specific issue. Lastly, if I could, I will take Alex Royle's point on access to GPs. I think that there is a variance of approach across the country for accessibility to GPs. I can speak specifically about one elderly relative trying to get them on a point with a GP who still has not seen a GP but ended up in hospital. I have my parents who phone up the GP and say that it is as easy as anything to walk in and get a GP appointment. I note that there is a wide variance across the country, and you cannot force GPs to do whatever they do, but it has to be continually monitored at the moment because there is a huge variance across the country. I am done. As transport minister, that is not something that I am expert in responding to, but it might be worthwhile if I ask health colleagues to write to the committee on that point, because a couple of MSPs have raised that, so I will raise it with their relevant health minister and ask them to engage with their officials and the committee on that. I have covered quite a lot of ground already. I noticed in the amendment 3 regulations that we were recognising mixed-dose vaccinations from this country and overseas. If I remember correctly, earlier on, we weren't mixing vaccines and there was a bit of uncertainty, although there was suggestion that there might be greater protection, but there might be more side effects. Can you give us an update on where that is? It is not definitive. Early trials suggest that the vaccines are behaving in the main, roughly the same, and mixing the vaccine for second, third doses does not really make that much difference. That is not much of a scientific sentence, but in the main, a vaccine is a vaccine for this disease, and they are all roughly in the same place. That is why, for instance, the booster dose is tending to be the one that we have available. We have Pfizer, so most people are getting Pfizer for their booster, because that is what the joint committee said to do, the messenger RNA vaccine. If you were going to India and you needed a typhoid vaccine, you would not check the manufacturer. That is where we are headed. We just had to do the science in real time on TV, so people have known which company went first and which company came second. Actually choosing your vaccine is honestly neither here nor there. Unless you have a specific indication where you cannot have it, some of the young and some who are allergic, that is a whole different question. In the main, the vast majority can have whichever vaccine is available. Following on from the question that the member who answered asked before, the length of protection that you have, is that varying between the vaccines? At one point, there were figures showing that it did vary a bit. Early data suggests that the more medium-term data suggests that it is all coming together, and that is exactly what you would expect, as more people get the vaccine. It is going to be a normal distribution. Remember, it is only yes or no. It is not marked out of 10, so it does not tell you if you are going to get the disease or not. You will get 9, 10, 11 months and some people will be less and some people will be more. In the end, the reason why we are doing boosters is that we are not sure what happens. Chile and Israel have seen vaccine waning, and Israel did a three-week gap between first and second doses. You will remember the controversy about three versus eight to twelve. They appear to have vaccine waning, and they have done a booster programme earlier than ours. They started earlier than ours because they were seeing vaccine waning. We are not seeing significant vaccine waning across the UK, so our booster dose is in anticipation of vaccines beginning to wear off. We have not mentioned the vaccine certificates much today. Is there any evidence so far that they are having an encouragement to get for people to take up that, Jags? I simply do not know. It is difficult to unpick it from general increase. I could argue that the teenagers have gone really well. 75 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds is amazing. I did not think that we would get anywhere near that in that age group, but, as we discussed over here, the 20 per cent of 18-29-year-olds worries me a little bit. I have not pushed that to 95, which is where I hope to get it. We are running a bit short of time now, but Professor Leitch will be back next week, so there are more general questions that we could ask him then. I now move on to the fourth agenda item, which is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments that were considered during the previous agenda item. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee have yet to consider the health protection coronavirus international travel and operator liability Scotland amendment number five, regulations 2021, SSI 2021 oblique 359. We will take the relevant motion at our meeting on 18 November. Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSIs listed under agenda item number four, before we take the motions? I now invite the minister to move on block motions S6M-01315, S6M-01398, S6M-01466, S6M-01528 and S6M-01634. I note that no members have indicated that they wish to speak, so I will now put the question on the motions. The question is that motions S6M-01315, S6M-01398, S6M-01466, S6M-01528 and S6M-01634 be agreed? Do members agree? The committee will publish a report to Parliament setting our decision on the statutory instruments considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the minister. I'd like to thank the minister and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning. The committee's next meeting will be on 4 November, when we will take evidence from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery. That concludes a public part of our meeting this morning, and I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave and for the meeting to move into the private session.