LOCKDOWN: One year since Scotland told to 'Stay at Home' due to coronavirus pandemic
The UK was placed into lockdown restrictions from 23rd March 2020.
Last updated 23rd Mar 2021
It's been one year since the country was forced into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On 23rd March 2020, the Prime Minister gave a televised speech asking us to stay at home - and telling all non-essential businesses to close.
Boris Johnson also said we couldn't meet up with anyone outside our own home, and employees should not go into work unless they can't work from home.
The message was reiterated by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, as Scotland adopted the 'Stay at Home' message.
At the time of putting the country in lockdown, 14 people in Scotland had died after testing positive for coronavirus.
As of 22nd March 2021, 7,552 deaths have been linked to Covid-19 in Scotland.
Sean McHugh, 30, from Hamilton lost his dad to the virus in April last year.
He said: "Sadly in the space of about 8-10 hours, his breathing rapidly went downhill and he just sadly lost his life.
"Whilst waiting for an ambulance to take him to hospital, he had a seizure which ultimately we believe was caused by the fact he had Covid."
He says his family are still finding it hard to cope without him.
Sean says: "Every day's a struggle - it's tough, I'm not going to beat around the bush with that.
"Trying to get through days can be very mentally draining."
Hospitals across all health boards have been near capacity since the pandemic hit last year.
Rebecca Fulton, lead nurse for older people's services at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, said: "I had actually just come back from maternity leave, so I had already had a year out of work and was coming back into the middle of a pandemic.
"It was really difficult to see a lot of patients dying without their loved ones being there.
"On shifts occasionally nurses would cry, but we were all there just for each other, we had a really good support network within our team."
Pauline Grose, an acute medical consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, explains when they knew to start preparing for the worst.
She said: "We normally have a fairly small unit comprising of eight beds, but we quite quickly became aware that was not going to be a large enough unit for the number of patients which we predicted may come in with respiratory failure.
"We were hearing a lot of word of mouth as to what was happening.
"The facilities in other countries are often quite different from what we've got in the UK and the patient population's quite different.
"We were getting quite overwhelmed with what we might expect, but we didn't really know what we would get."
A national one minute silence is due to take place at midday to remember those who have lost their lives to coronavirus since the pandemic began.