Covid-19: Scotland records 123 new infections in a day

Scotland has recorded 123 new cases of coronavirus in the last day, the joint-highest total since May.

It comes after 88 new infections were reported on Saturday amid a spate of local clusters around the country.

Of the new cases on Sunday, 39 are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and 26 are in Lanarkshire, both areas affected by recent local outbreaks.

But there are just six cases in Grampian, with the cluster that started in a number of Aberdeen pubs at the start of the month now deemed under control.

And there are only seven new cases in Tayside, a region dealing with two known clusters at a 2 Sisters chicken factory in Perthshire and an additional support needs school in Dundee.

There is just one new case in the Borders, where the town of Hawick has been affected by a small new Covid-19 cluster this week.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran accounts for 16 of the new infections, and NHS Lothian has 15 of them.

The country also saw 123 cases recorded last Saturday, August 22, which was the highest daily figure since May 16.

While Sunday’s figure is the joint-highest number of new cases in Scotland this month, it only accounts for 0.7% of newly-tested Scots.

Nearly 27,000 Covid-19 tests were completed in Scotland in the last 24 hours, testing 16,155 people.

More than half a million Scots have now been tested for the virus, with nearly 200,000 individuals tested in the last month.

No new deaths among confirmed coronavirus patients have been registered in the last 24 hours, although there were two earlier this week.

There are 251 people are in hospital around the country with Covid, seven fewer than Saturday.

Of those, five patients are being treated in intensive care, which is unchanged.

A total of 4233 people treated for the virus in hospital have been able to go home since the pandemic began, a rise of four on yesterday.

On Saturday, the total number of coronavirus patients who have been discharged from hospital outstripped the number of deaths for the first time since April.

The death toll from Covid-19 in Scotland currently stands at 4224.