Positive Covid tests fall to lowest since October last year

The First Minister says Scotland has recorded 57 deaths from coronavirus and 685 positive tests in the past 24 hours.

It brings the death toll under this measure - of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days - to 6,885.

Speaking at the Scottish Government coronavirus briefing, Nicola Sturgeon said 194,954 people have tested positive in Scotland, up from 194,269 the previous day.

The daily test positivity rate is 3.8%, down from 5.2% - but The First Minister warned to be cautious when looking at the low positivity rate.

She said: "As you've heard me do many times before, I will caution against reading too much into a single day's figure but obviously that's a lower test positivity than we've had for some time, and gives us further reason to be hopeful that's going very firmly in the right direction."

There are 1,261 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down 56 in 24 hours, and 95 patients are in intensive care, down four.

She said by 8.30am on Thursday a total of 1,354,966 Scots had received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine - an increase of 34,892 from the previous day.

69% of 65-69 year olds have also received their first dose - meaning Scotland is on track to complete this category by early March.

The Scottish Government will also be able to publish more vaccination data than before following discussions with the UK Government and vaccine providers.

Previously, the UK Government had asked ministers not to publish data over security concerns.

The data will be released on a Tuesday and will give information of vaccinations available until the previous Sunday.

The First Minister said: "We hope that regular publication of this data will be helpful to the media and to the public because it will give a fuller picture of the supplies we are receiving each week and will then allow for a better understanding and indeed closer scrutiny of the progress of the vaccination programme."

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