Coronavirus in Scotland: Scottish hospitals face record numbers of Covid patients despite fall in infections

More people are now in hospital with coronavirus in Scotland than at any time during the pandemic, despite new infections falling to the lowest level in almost three weeks.

More than 2,000 Scots are being treated in hospital for the virus, with almost 150 of them in the country’s intensive care units.

But newly detected cases of the virus have fallen from a high of 2,649 on January 7, to 1,341 on Sunday - the lowest figure since late December.

Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, called the trend in cases “encouraging”, but warned that Scotland needed to improve its test and trace system, and called on the Scottish Government to pay people to self isolate.

“Encouraging to see case numbers under 1500 & positivity dropping under 10 per cent,” she told followers on Twitter.

“Weekends [are] always lower but hopefully trend continues this week & we can see numbers under 1,000 & positivity under 5 per cent soon.

The professor added: “Progress requires: strong travel restrictions to stop any new variants coming in & spreading, improving test/trace/isolate including paying people 80 per cent of their salaries to isolate (like furlough) & offering hotel rooms for those needing to isolate & continued roll-out of vaccine.”

Figures from the Scottish Government show that more than 220,000 people have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine in Scotland.

More people are now in hospital with coronavirus in Scotland than at any time during the pandemic, despite new infections falling to the lowest level in almost three weeks. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / AFP)

As of Sunday, January 17, more than 3,000 Scots have also received their second dose of Covid vaccine.

The British Army is set to open 80 new vaccine centres across Scotland today, in an effort to boost the country’s immunization effort.

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