NHS Highland region detects a further dozen new coronavirus cases in the past day; the rise came as Scotland's overall number of positive tests for Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic surpassed the 30,000 mark

TWELVE more cases of the coronavirus have been detected in the NHS Highland area – and Scotland's total since the start of the pandemic has now passed 30,000.

The NHS Highland region's cumulative number of cases, meanwhile, rose from 669 to 681 when the latest daily update was published.

Scotland reported 775 additional daily infections – or 12.6 per cent of all those people newly tested in the past day – to take its overall number of cases to 30,687.

Some 175 people were in hospital yesterday with recently diagnosed Covid-19 – up 19 from the day before.

The number of those in intensive care also increased, from 17 to 19, in the past 24 hours.

And sadly there have been four further deaths among people with confirmed Covid-19.

Elsewhere in the north of Scotland, there were seven further cases reported in the Western Isles following the recent cluster there – taking NHS Eileanan Siar's cumulative total to 39.

NHS Shetland and NHS Orkney detected no new infections overnight, but NHS Grampian reported 24 fresh diagnoses for an overall total of 2362.

NHS Tayside had 30 new positive tests for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours to take its running tally to 2558.

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