The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Daily death toll at highest since May
Scotland has recorded its highest daily death toll from C ovid -19 in six months. The overall number of people who died after testing positive for coronavirus within the previous 28 days reached 3,143 yesterday, an increase of 64 from the previous day and the highest since May 6.
After placing the whole of Tayside and Fife under Tier 3 restrictions on Tuesday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned it is not in the interests of local authorities to be prematurely moved down.
She said: “Taking a part of the country down a level is not some kind of neutral act.
“Going down a level means an easing of restrictions and that means the virus has more opportunities to transmit, and we will probably see transmission increasing.
“We’ve got to be certain before we increase the risks in that way that the particular area we’ re talking about is in a stable enough position to cope with that and that it’s not marginal, so any increase in transmission isn’ t immediately going to tip it into the higher level again.”
She said decisions would continue to be taken on a council- by- council basis but admitted local factors, such as an area’s reliance on particular hospitals, could see decisions taken across health boards.
“I don’ t want to be putting any local authority into any level of restrictions and I don’t want to be putting them into a higher level of restrictions.
“When you’ve got cases rising in Angus by 47% in the space of the last seven days that is a rapid and sharp increase.
“So this is actually about trying to make sure that we prevent that rapid increase we’re seeing across Angus causing more cases and the virus ending up in areas... where it isn’t just now.”
Ms Sturgeon said stricter restrictions imposed in Scotland had already “very significantly” slowed the spread of the virus and saved lives.
She said: “The measures that we have adopted in recent weeks and the sacrifices people across the country have been making have been having an effect.
“There’s no doubt, when we look at the data over the past few weeks, these measures have slowed very significantly the rate at wh ich cases were increasing.
“Everybody should be under no doubt that these measures and these sacrifices have had an effect, and they will have saved lives.”
A further 1,261 positive tests were recorded into yesterday, taking the daily test positivity rate to 6.5%, down from 9 .5% on Tuesday.
There were 1,235 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down four in 24 hours.
Of these patients, 93 were in intensive care, down by nine.
Separate figures released by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) indicate 4,856 people in Scotland have died with confirmed or suspected coronavirus as of Sunday.
The statistics differ from the lab-confirmed coronav irus deaths announced daily by the Scottish Government because the NRS figures include suspected or probable cases of Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman denied the spread of the virus was aided by a “coding error” masking the fact Scotland’s contract tracing system was less effective than previously claimed.
The Scottish Government has confirmed the error has now been fixed, after Public Health Scotland first raised the alarm on November 4.
Ms Freeman said the information that was “miscoded and wrong” did not prevent the system from “far exceeding” the World Health Organisation’s requirement for 80% of new cases to have their close contacts traced within 72 hours.