Coronavirus in Scotland: 44 news deaths and 880 new cases in the past 24 hours

A total of 44 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours as Scotland sees a rise of 880 new cases of coronavirus since yesterday.

Pedestrians wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walk on Buchanan Street in central Glasgow.

Of the new cases, 260 were confirmed in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 190 in Lanarkshire, 122 in Grampian and 94 in the Lothians.

The remaining cases were across eight other health board areas.

To date, 1,161 people are being treated for Covid-19 in hospital, a decrease of 36 from yesterday, and 84 people are in intensive care, the same as yesterday, having recently tested positive for the virus.

The National Records of Scotland recently published their weekly update today which includes cases where covid is a suspected or a contributory cause of death.

By Sunday November 22, the total number of registered deaths linked to covid under the wider definition was 5,380.

244 of those deaths were registered over the course of the last week, November 16-22.

This is 35 fewer than the week before signalling the first decrease in the weekly number of deaths in Scotland since the end of September.

Speaking at the briefing today, Nicola Sturgeon said: “Any reduction of the number of people dying is of course good news but any feeling of relief we feel about that must be tempered by a recognition that the number of deaths is still far too high.”

160 of last week’s deaths occurred in hospitals, 67 occurred in care homes and 17 at home or in another non-institutional setting.

A total of 90,961 in Scotland are confirmed to have had the virus since the start of the outbreak in March, according to government figures.

The country’s death toll currently stands at 3,588 under the daily measurement.

The new 880 cases represents 6.8 per cent of new tests that were carried out yesterday.

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