"Grounds for optimism" one year on from Covid being declared a pandemic

It's one year since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid as a pandemic - but Nicola Sturgeon says there are reasons to be optimistic.

Speaking ahead of First Minister's Questions, Ms Sturgeon said: "The last 12 months have been incredibly tough - unimaginably tough for everybody."

"But as I indicated on Tuesday, we do now have real grounds for optimism, albeit cautious optimism." She said.

The First Minister said case numbers, hospitalisations and death figures have all fallen in the last few weeks.

She continued: "when we publish the latest estimate of the R number later today we expect it to show that it remains below one."

"And, of course, the vaccination programme has given a first dose to 40% of the entire adult population and it is set to significantly accelerate over the next few weeks.''

There were another 22 deaths in the past 24 hours of people who have tested positive for Covid in the preceding 28 days.

There were 591 positive tests since yesterday, that's 2.5% that's a 0.6% decrease from Wednesday.

There are 556 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down 26 in 24 hours, and 42 patients are in intensive care, down seven.

Ms Sturgeon said 1,825,800 people have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, up 16,642 from yesterday, and 141,433 have received their second dose.

The First Minister also confirmed that the return to school is still on track.

All primary school pupils and more secondary pupils will be back in school from Monday, while changes to current rules will allow four people from two households to mix outdoors from Friday.

Ms Sturgeon said: "Because of that continued progress, I can confirm we will go ahead as planned with the next stage of the reopening of schools on Monday.

"In addition, changes to the rules on outdoor meetings and activities which I set out on Tuesday will come into force tomorrow.''