Promise of increased testing capacity as virus cases keep rising

Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to increase Scotland's testing capacity as corona virus cases and deaths continue to rise.

The First Minister said the Scottish Government' s strategic framework for tackling Covid-19, which will be published today, will outline a new testing strategy that will see results returned faster.

The latest Covid-19 figures show 17 deaths and 1,712 positive tests have been recorded in the past 24 hours.

The number of people in hospital has increased by 55 to 928, with 74 patients in intensive care.

Speaking during the daily briefing on the virus, Ms Sturgeon said the R number in Scotland-the a vera gen umber of people each person with Covid-19 goes on to infect - is currently “perhaps as high” as 1.5.

Scotland already has a target of increasing testing capacity to 65,000 a day by the end of this year.

Ms Sturgeon said to achieve that, at least 10,000 more Scottish tests would need to be analysed by UK government Lighthouse labs while the NHS laboratory capacity will increased by an additional 22,000 tests a day.

Three new regional hubs are being set up in Grampian, Lothian and Greater Glasgow and Clyde, she said.

“Contractors are already carrying out building work for these hubs, installation of equipment is progressing at pace and so is staff recruitment,” she said.

“We expect these to be up and running in the next few weeks.”

The First Minister said the new hubs will under take all of the routine testing for care homes and that will help get results back“more quickly then we sometimes do now”.

Ms Sturgeon also said the Office for National Statistics is to publish the initial results from a coronavirus survey in Scotland today.

“The survey estimates how many people in private households were infected over a twoweek period of time,” the First Minister said.

“The results published tomorrow will cover the two weeks up until last Friday."

She said high levels of participation in the research means it is being published earlier than expected, adding the research will show how many people have coronavirus antibodies.