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| Covid in Scotland: Tighter restrictions expected 'within days' | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Additional lockdown restrictions will "almost certainly" be put in place in Scotland in the next couple of days, Nicola Sturgeon has said. | Additional lockdown restrictions will "almost certainly" be put in place in Scotland in the next couple of days, Nicola Sturgeon has said. |
| Speaking at her daily briefing, the first minister said "fast and urgent action" was needed to tackle the growth of the virus. | Speaking at her daily briefing, the first minister said "fast and urgent action" was needed to tackle the growth of the virus. |
| Ms Sturgeon indicated that a package of new restrictions would be announced within the next 48 hours. | Ms Sturgeon indicated that a package of new restrictions would be announced within the next 48 hours. |
| A total of 255 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours. | |
| That represented 6.3% of those tested, the third day running the "positivity rate" has exceeded 5% - which the World Health Organization has said is a key benchmark for a virus to be considered under control. | |
| While no new deaths were reported, the number of people treated in hospital rose to 73, an increase of 10. | |
| Ms Sturgeon said: "I need to be absolutely straight with people across Scotland, that additional restrictions will almost certainly be put in place in Scotland over the next couple of days. | |
| "Hopefully this will be with four-nations alignment, but if necessary it will have to happen without that." | |
| She confirmed that a meeting of the UK government's Cobra emergency committee would take place, and said she would be speaking to Prime Minister Boris Johnson directly after the briefing. | |
| She added: "In that call, I will impress upon the prime minister my view that we need decisive, urgent and as far as possible given our individual responsibilities, co-ordinated action across the UK. | |
| "I will be clear that I am willing to allow a bit more time for four-nations discussions to take place before making final decisions for Scotland, but I will be equally clear that the urgency of this situation will mean that we cannot, must not and will not wait too long." | |
| The first minister said she would make a statement to the Scottish Parliament on either Tuesday or Wednesday. | |
| 'Move sharply' | |
| Ms Sturgeon gave no detail of what new restrictions would be introduced, but said the government was "very close to a point of decision". | |
| "At the heart of this decision is a simple truth - the longer we wait to introduce new measures, the longer these measures are likely to be in place," she said. | |
| "If we move sharply now to get the virus back under control we can minimise the time we all spend under any new restrictions." | |
| Ms Sturgeon added that there would be financial support for people required to self-isolate, particularly those on low incomes. | |
| While larger fines for non-compliance were under consideration, she said a better approach was to "remove barriers" to self-isolation. | |
| She said: "Nobody should be forced to choose between self-isolating for the collective good and paying their rent and feeding their families. | |
| "If that is the choice people face, then it shouldn't be a surprise to us that compliance levels will be lower than we need them to be." | |
| The UK government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance earlier warned that without further restrictions there could be 50,000 new coronavirus a day by mid-October. This could lead to about 200 deaths a day UK-wide by the middle of November. | |
| Sir Patrick said the number of cases was roughly doubling every seven days, and that speedy action was necessary to slow the rate of increase. |