The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
First coronavirus walk-in testing centre to open in St Andrews.
Sturgeon confirms new testing facility will be located in Victory Memorial Hall
The first minister has confirmed St Andrews will house the first of 11 walk-in coronavirus testing centres.
Nicola Sturgeon announced during her daily Covid-19 briefing yesterday that the first of these would be located in the Victory Memorial Hall.
Together with the 10 other local walk-in centres that will eventually be established across Scotland, they will help to increase sampling capacity by more than 3,000 tests a day.
The move comes amid a “major spike” in demand for tests across Scotland over the weekend, which led to “some constraints” on the booking portal.
A total of 44 new cases was reported over the last 24 hours, with seven of these in Tayside, taking the Scottish total to 19,921.
The first minister said she expects cases linked to the Coupar Angus outbreak to rise in the coming days.
The latest figures released on Monday indicated 152 positive cases – 134 factory workers and 18 contacts. Contact tracing is continuing, with the first minister confirming she expects numbers to continue to rise in the days to come.
Over the past six days, the mobile testing unit at the factory has tested more than 900 people, with other testing sites across Dundee, Forfar and Perth testing more than 2,500 people so far.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I want to stress, in relation to all of these outbreaks that we’re dealing with just now – and indeed the situation with schools – we are not unduly concerned by any of these situations right at this moment.
“That said, we’re not complacent either. As you’ll appreciate, we continue to monitor all cases, clusters and outbreaks very, very closely indeed.”
The public was also reminded during the daily briefing that they should only book a test if they have symptoms of a new cough, fever or loss or change of taste or smell.
Exceptions to that general position include if an individual is advised to get
a test by Test and Protect or those who work in a profession that may require it, such as staff working in schools.
There was no increase in the number of people who have died within 28 days of a positive test, and this remains at 2,492.
The latest daily figures showed that 0.8% of those tested for the virus were positive.
Ms Sturgeon said of those who tested positive, 243 were in hospital, down five in 24 hours.
Of these, one was in intensive care, no change from the previous day.
Miss Sturgeon also addressed the “major spike in demand” for coronavirus testing over the weekend which caused problems for people trying to book tests.
She suggested that a UK-wide surge in people attempting to get tested for Covid-19 was responsible for the “technical issues”.
“Over the weekend, there was a major spike in demand for testing – not just in Scotland, but we think across the UK,” she added.
“That led to some constraints on the booking portal throughout the day yesterday and that, in turn, resulted in a surge of calls to our Covid-19 helpline.
“I know this will have been frustrating for people trying to book a test, so I want to thank everyone for bearing with us as we’ve worked to address these issues.”
Ms Sturgeon added “contingency plans are already being activated” in order to increase Scotland’s test capacity, including three mobile testing units being deployed to Glasgow and the central belt.
One of the mobile units was available from yesterday afternoon while the other two will be deployed later this week, increasing capacity by between 1,200-1,500 tests.
The move follows some people from Scotland appearing to have been wrongly directed to testing centres in England in recent days.
Others were said to have been booked into a centre in Northern Ireland.
The first minister said the authorities have “always known there would be fluctuations in demands for testing”.
A total of 57,173 deaths involving Covid-19 have now been registered in the UK.
Figures published yesterday by the ONS show 52,091 deaths involving Covid-19 had happened in England and Wales up to August 14, and had been registered by August 22.
Figures published last week by the National Records for Scotland showed that 4,216 deaths involving Covid-19 had been registered in Scotland up to August 16, while 866 deaths had occurred in Northern Ireland up to August 14 (and had been registered up to August 19) according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.