Scotland has recorded 57 deaths from coronavirus and 685 positive tests in the past 24 hours, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
It brings the death toll under this measure – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – to 6,885.
The latest statistics show 194,954 people have tested positive in Scotland, up from 194,269 the previous day.
READ MORE: Scottish Government urged to define Covid-19 'elimination' strategy
Of these cases 158 are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 120 in Lothian, and 100 in Lanarkshire - with the remaining cases spread over nine other health board areas.
The daily test positivity rate is 3.8%, down from 5.2%.
There are 1,261 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down 56 in 24 hours, and 95 patients are in intensive care, down four.
She added that by 8.30am on Thursday a total of 1,354,966 Scots had received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine – an increase of 34,892 from the previous day.
Addressing the daily coronavirus briefing, Nicola Sturgeon said the test positivity rate is lower than it has been for "some time", giving further reason to be hopeful that the numbers are going "very firmly in the right direction."
She added that the number of patients in hospital suffering from coronavirus is "quite a bit" below the peak last spring, although she warned that hospital continue to be under "very severe pressure."
Vaccination data
The Scottish Government will be able to publish more vaccination data than before following discussions with the UK Government and vaccine providers.
Previously, the UK Government had asked ministers not to publish data over security concerns.
The First Minister said: “As a result, the Scottish Government is publishing information today about the supplies we’ve received so far and from next week onwards will publish this data initially on a weekly basis.”
The data will be released on a Tuesday and will give information of vaccinations available until the previous Sunday.
She added: “We hope that regular publication of this data will be helpful to the media and to the public because it will give a fuller picture of the supplies we are receiving each week and will then allow for a better understanding and indeed closer scrutiny of the progress of the vaccination programme.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel