Coronavirus: Scotland records 267 new cases overnight

Another 267 coronavirus infections have been reported in Scotland overnight.

It’s the highest number of new cases logged in the country since May 6.

One person with coronavirus has died in the last 24 hours.

Of the 267 new cases, there are 101 in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area and 59 in Lanarkshire, where bans on indoor household gatherings are in effect for seven council areas.

The infections Scotland-wide amount to 3.6% of all newly-tested individuals.

The latest Covid-19 fatality takes the death toll among Scots who died within 28 days of their positive coronavirus test to 2500.

However, counting suspected Covid deaths and those who died after the 28-day period the total is 4235.

Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, Sturgeon warned a UK-wide testing backlog means Tuesday’s figures will likely include more results from over the past few days than normal.

The First Minister said she has spoken to UK health secretary Matt Hancock about the bottleneck in processing test samples in recent days.

She said she hopes to see an improvement in the next few days.

Surging demand has seen the UK Government-managed regional testing network struggle to clear their backlogs in different parts of the UK, including the Lighthouse super-laboratory in Glasgow which deals with the Scottish swabs.

That UK-wide network now deals with the vast bulk of coronavirus test samples in Scotland and the rest of Britain.

Sturgeon told the briefing: “I have a concern about the capacity constraints right now with the UK-wide system and for Scotland in recent days this has not been an issue of access to testing slots at regional testing centres or mobile testing units but instead it has been one of access to sufficient Lighthouse laboratory processing.

“It is this that has led to a backlog in the system and longer turnaround times for tests than we we want to be the case.

“As this is a UK-wide system we are not able to resolve this on our own and the issues are impacted by demand elsewhere in the UK.

“To that end last night I had a constructive conference call with Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, and Dido Harding, head of the UK testing system, to seek assurances that Scotland will continue to get fair access to the UK-wide laboratory capacity and discuss how we can resolve these issues.

“So I hope to see improvement over the next few days but of course I will continue to provide updates.”

In addition, the First Minister announced the way statistics are reported on people in hospital and intensive care with the virus is changing.

She said hospital patients will no longer be counted as Covid patients if their stay in hospital exceeds 28 days, as current counting is capturing people who are no longer being treated for the virus but for other things.

And only patients who first test positive during their current stay in hospital, or in the two weeks before their admission, will be counted from now on, Sturgeon added.

Under the old definition, 262 people are in hospital overall who were diagnosed with coronavirus – but this figure won’t be published again.

Under the new, narrower method of counting, there are 48 patients being treated for Covid-19.

Of those, six are being treated in intensive care units.