NICOLA Sturgeon has not ruled out extending Aberdeen's lockdown after more than 150 cases were linked to a coronavirus cluster.
The First Minister said more than half of Scotland's latest Covid-19 cases are in the NHS Grampian health board area.
Speaking at the Scottish Government's regular coronavirus briefing, she said there have been 29 new cases of the virus across Scotland in the past 24 hours and provisional figures indicate 18 of these are in Grampian.
However, Ms Sturgeon said she is not able to say how many of these cases are linked to the Aberdeen outbreak that led to a local lockdown being introduced.
She said there have been 231 coronavirus cases in Aberdeen since the start of the local outbreak on July 26.
Of these, 157 were linked to the Covid-19 cluster and 852 contacts have been identified.
The First Minister praised the work of the contract tracing teams but warned she expects cases and contacts to rise further in the days ahead.
She said an extension of the Aberdeen lockdown cannot be ruled out but restrictions will not be kept in place longer than is deemed necessary.
She said: "Having done it, we need to make sure we do it long enough to get the cluster and the outbreak under control and so I can't rule out and won't rule out the possibility that we may have to extend for a further seven days."
Aberdeen's lockdown will be reviewed on Wednesday.
Ms Sturgeon added: "More generally, the events of the past fortnight have been a reminder of how fragile Scotland's overall position is and that is the same in countries across the world.
"The fact is we all still need to be really careful right now and Aberdeen is very hard proof of that fact.
"While our lives have regained a bit of normality in recent weeks, nobody's life should be feeling absolutely normal at the moment.
"Covid is still present and we know it is still highly infectious so all of us have a big role to play in keeping it under control."
The daily overall new cases figure across Scotland is down 19 from the 48 confirmed on Sunday and takes the total people in Scotland who have tested positive for the virus to 19,027.
The First Minister said no deaths have been recorded of patients who tested positive for coronavirus in the previous 28 days.
There have been no deaths under this measure for 25 consecutive days, with this total remaining at 2,491.
Of the people who tested positive, 267 are in hospital - up six from the previous day. Of these, three are in intensive care.
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