A further 19 cases of Covid-19 has brought the total of people diagnosed with the virus to 1,353 across the Highlands, Islands and Grampian since the pandemic began.
New figures from Health Protection Scotland show a total of 67,097 people in the country have been tested through NHS labs.
Of these, 54,173 were confirmed negative, 12,924 were positive and 1,762 patients have died.
As of 2pm today, 67,097 people in Scotland have been tested for #coronavirus
54,173 confirmed negative
12,924 positive1,762 patients who tested positive have sadly died.
Latest update ➡️ https://t.co/kZjGNz2EDe
Health advice ➡️ https://t.co/l7rqArB6Qu#COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/VLgEFy4srd— Scottish Government (@scotgov) May 7, 2020
The latest update on confirmed cases shows there has been 16 people diagnosed with coronavirus in the Grampian area in the past 24 hours, bringing the region’s total to 973.
There are 93 people in hospital in the north-east with 11 of those in intensive care. There are 12 people in the Highlands receiving hospital treatment.
In the Highlands, the total is 313 after three more cases were confirmed overnight. The islands have not recorded any new cases. Shetland has had 54, Orkney has seven cases and there has been six cases confirmed in the Western Isles.
“A matter of life and death”
Nicola Sturgeon has extended Scotland’s lockdown restrictions to avoid “catastrophic mistake” in the nations battle against coronavirus.
Speaking at her daily briefing from the Scottish Government’s headquarters in Edinburgh, she said: “Our assessment of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that the lockdown must be extended at this stage.”
With reports that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce some easing of restrictions, Ms Sturgeon insisted she would “not be pressurised” into lifting measures prematurely.
She explained she did not want to lift restrictions too early, and risk a potential second spike of coronavirus.
The Scottish First Minister said: “The decisions we take now are a matter of life and death and that is why they weigh so heavily.”
Handle with care
Speaking about why she believed the lockdown needed to be continued, Nicola Sturgeon said the situation “remains fragile” and insisted that “extreme caution” was required.
The First Minister said: “There are still significant numbers of people in Scotland infected with this virus and we’re not yet confident that the all-important R number is comfortably below one.”
The R number measures the number of people that each person with coronavirus infects with the disease, with Ms Sturgeon saying this “could still be hovering around one just now”.
And she added this “means that any significant easing up of restrictions at this stage would be very, very risky indeed”.
There are also suggestions the R number in Scotland could be a “bit higher” than other parts of the UK, she added, “perhaps reflecting the fact that our first cases came later than England so we might be at a different and slightly later stage of the infection”.
