Coronavirus in Scotland - track the spread in these charts and maps

Have you seen our new tracker page? Click here to see our new collection of charts tracking the recovery from the pandemic.

We’ve put together a collection of daily updated charts and maps to track the coronavirus crisis in Scotland.

The table below shows an at-a-glance view of the situation in each local authority. It shows new reported cases in the last day, as well as the total cases in each area since the pandemic began.

The chart below shows the number of new tests reported each day. This figure shows all tests carried out, regardless of the result.

After more than a month of negative tests, the first confirmed case of the virus was announced at the beginning of March and began to show significant daily increases as of March 12.

The proportion of people who test positive every day was trending downward since late April, but unfortunately has begun to increase again.

The Scottish Government has not yet released any figures on the number of people who have recovered, but we have been tracking the cumulative confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, presumed deaths, and number of patients in intensive care.

We’ve also been tracking which health boards the cases are in. Again, these are cumulative figures as we do not have the data on the number of people who have recovered or the number of active cases.

The Scottish Government began publishing data at a local authority level on April 22. The chart below shows both – click the arrow to switch between health board and local authority.

You can also see the number of cases over time in the charts below. The number of cases has fluctuated in some areas due to human error involved in the early recording method.

As the number of daily new cases reduces, the cumulative totals for the health board areas become less important. The heatmap below shows the number of new cases by health board area and shows the progression.

Confirmed deaths in Scotland are now at very low levels. The chart below shows the daily number of confirmed deaths as well as the confirmed and suspected deaths from the NRS.

The April 22 NRS report added deaths by local authority area for the first time. Details of both local authority and health board are below, click the arrow to see the local authority data.

The NRS also provide information on the number of deaths by smaller areas known as intermediate zones once per month.

The charts below show the distribution of deaths by age and gender.

Given the way the virus transmits, we also looked at whether there was any link between the fatality rate and the population density.

April 8 also saw new details published on the number of people who are in hospital or intensive care in each health board. Whilst we don’t have exact numbers on the available beds or capacity, we can begin to track these numbers over time. Use the dropdown menu to select an area. Any patient numbers of less than five are suppressed due to data protection.

The chart below shows the proportion of deaths by location.

On May 6 Public Health Scotland published data on cases by deprivation level. This was followed up on May 13 by the National Records for Scotland, which provided the same data for Covid-19 deaths.

At one point Covid-19 was the leading cause of death in Scotland. From May onward, it began to fall down the ranks.

R-number

The R value is a measure of the level of transmission of the virus and needs to be kept below one to see a continued decline. On May 21, the First Minister published the R value in a document setting out the route out of lockdown. Ms Sturgeon committed to updating the figure every Thursday. A more detailed explanation of what the R value means can be found here. Prior to lockdown it is thought the R value was as high as 6.

How far behind other countries are we?

As Covid-19 death recording is so complex, a more reliable measure is excess deaths. Excess deaths is the difference between the total recorded deaths by all causes and the average of the previous five years. The chart below shows this for the UK constituent countries. This information comes from the weekly NRS for Scotland, and the relevant bodies in the other countries.

The chart below shows the daily number of new cases in each UK country.

This chart shows the weekly number of deaths in each UK country per million population. This uses the higher confirmed and suspected death numbers from the ONS, NRS and NISRA.