Coronavirus in Scotland: New coronavirus cases remain ‘worryingly high’ as 2,539 new cases recorded today

Daily figures from the Scottish Government reveal that a total of 2,539 new positive cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours and the First Minister urges people to stick with the rules as figures remain “worryingly high.”

A heart with NHS written on it on the wall of a quiet alleyway in Edinburgh (Photo credit: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire).

This takes the total number of people who have test positive for coronavirus in Scotland up to 129,992.

Out of 28,295 new tests for covid that reported results, 2,851 (10.1%) were positive.

10,038 were from NHS Scotland labs and 18,257 were from the UK Government testing programme.

The Government has not published any other figures for today.

Yesterday, 68 deaths were recorded across the country.

Responding to today's figures via Twitter, Nicola Sturgeon said: “Today’s case numbers are worryingly high again.

"The new variant is accelerating spread.

"PLEASE do not visit other people’s homes just now, even today - if you first foot someone today, or hug/kiss/handshake them HNY, you are putting yourself, others & the NHS at risk.

"The vaccine cavalry is on way, offering real hope for 2021 - but with this new variant, the next few weeks may be the most dangerous we’ve faced since Mar/April.

"We must act together to suppress it, to save lives and protect the NHS.”

Reports from Imperial College London reveal that the new covid variant has a higher R number of between 0.4 and 0.7 than the previous strain.

Referring to the new variant’s higher transmission speed, Axel Gandy, chair of statistics at Imperial College told the BBC: “This is a huge difference in how easy this virus spreads.”

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