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.