A "SMALL number" of Covid cases in the past week have been linked to the Rangers title win celebrations, Scotland's chief medical officer confirmed.
Dr Gregor Smith said contact tracing has established that some people who have tested positive for the infection in the past seven days were among the hundreds of revellers in Glasgow's George Square on Sunday March 7 or went to events linked to it.
"There are a small number who are revealing that they either took part in those celebrations or were at house parties that arose from that," said Dr Smith, adding that the incubation period for the virus means there could be more linked cases emerging this week.
Although very few outbreaks have been linked to large public events, such as the Black Lives Matter protest marches, the risk tends to come when attendees car share or travel en masse using public transport together, and gather in one another's homes afterwards.
It comes amid warnings over a "slight increase" in cases over the past seven days, with 4,009 infections in the week to today compared to 3,529 in the week to March 8.
READ MORE: 'Too early' to say if increase in cases linked to Rangers celebrations
Dr Smith said it was "too early" to know what impact, if any, the celebrations by Rangers fans would have on case numbers, but said they were seeing an uptick in incidence in some part of the west of Scotland.
He said: "What we are seeing over the last seven days is an increase in the number of cases that we're associating with many of those areas, particularly Lanarkshire, Glasgow - and Glasgow city in particular - Ayrshire as well.
"How closely we can associate that with the events of last weekend is difficult."
It comes as data shows that there has been an increase the virus rates among younger working age Scots in the 20-24 and 25-44 age groups since the beginning of March.
"The most common age group for cases right now is between and ages of 25 and 44 - that working age population," said Dr Smith.
Professor Linda Bauld, the Usher chair of public health at Edinburgh University, said there was evidence people were now less likely to be sticking to the rules on social distancing.
She said: "I've seen some of the compliance data that the Scottish Government gets and you can see that compliance is starting to decline.
"It's not broken down by age group, but you can see that in general over the last two to three weeks in particular, people are less likely to say they are following all the guidance.
"It's totally understandable from a behavioural point of view, because you've got good news on vaccines, people know that restrictions are going to be eased in the future, the weather is better as well, and those are the age groups that you would expect to be most influenced by all that.
"I don't think there's any big structural explanations, for example we're not seeing more workplaces opening up."
Vaccinations mean that an any increase in cases will now be less likely to translate into infections and hospitalisations among older people, who were prioritised for immunisation.
"We now know that transmission is affected by vaccination and we know that infections are definitely going down more quickly in the older age groups," said Prof Bauld.
"The bedded in relationship between hospital admissions and case numbers and deaths - those links have not exactly been broken, but they've deteriorated because of the protection vaccination offers.
"So it's no longer a predictable trajectory from case numbers to deaths, remembering that mortality is about 1% of cases.
"Hospital admissions and deaths are still falling at a steady rate."
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said younger children going back to school "obviously leads to a bit more interaction from parents taking kids to school", and said the Scottish Government would be "monitoring carefully" whether the recent increase in cases continues.
The percentage positivity has remained unchanged at 3.2 per cent - the same as it was a week ago - so the increase in infections detected could be due to increased testing. An extra 10,000 tests were carried out over the past seven days.
Ms Sturgeon added: "Any increase in cases is obviously a concern because it runs the risk of the virus starting to gain momentum again.
"It may be - and I understand this - as lockdown gets more frustrating and difficult, there's just a little bit of easing up on the part of people."
READ MORE: 'No evidence whatsoever' that Oxford vaccine causing blood clots
Dr Smith urged younger people not to become complacent.
"It's easy to slip into a state of mind whereby the vaccination programme is going really well, people have maybe even had their first vaccination, and they look upon the risks differently.
"But this really emphasises for us clearly that the virus hasn't gone away.
"For those age groups where it's still going to be some time before they get their vaccination, it doesn't mean to say they won't become ill, that they won't be infected and pass it on to other people.
"If we're starting to see this now, it means we really have to be ever more careful and cautious about how we open up from here because there's a risk we could accelerate some of these increases."
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