NHS Highland health board area detects 44 new Covid-19 cases; news comes as region's number of coronavirus intensive care patients reached a record level
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A TENTH of all intensive care Covid patients in Scotland are in now in NHS Highland hospitals, after the region’s total climbed to another record overnight.
There were 11 people in intensive care in NHS Highland last night, an increase of one since the last update, and the highest number in the health board area since the pandemic began.
Scotland as a whole had 109 intensive care patients with active Covid-19 last night. Only the health boards for Greater Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Ayrshire & Arran have more intensive care patients than NHS Highland.
The number of people being treated in NHS Highland hospitals for the virus also increased by one overnight, and now stands at 34.
The rises came as 44 fresh positive tests for Covid-19 were recorded across the NHS Highland health board area in the past day.
There were 830 new cases of the virus across Scotland over the same period – representing four per cent of all tests carried out in the past day.
The number of people requiring hospital treatment in Scotland for Covid-19 last night stood at 1499 – down 43 on yesterday’s update.
Of those, 109 were in intensive care – a fall of four. The Scottish Government has also begun releasing figures for a new category of people who are in intensive care. This covers people who were diagnosed more than 28 days ago, but are still in intensive care with ‘long stay’ ailments. By this measure, there were 28 further people in intensive care – down two from yesterday.
Sadly a further 48 people have died from the virus.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the north, only NHS Shetland went without recording any new positive tests in the past 24 hours.
NHS Orkney detected two new infections (for 66 overall) and NHS Eileanan Siar recorded three (229).
NHS Grampian registered 45 new positive tests, to take its running total to 12,954.
And NHS Tayside added 19 cases, for a cumulative tally of 12,590.
There have been 189,175 confirmed cases of the coronavirus across Scotland since the start of the pandemic.
But in more positive news, Scotland recorded another new daily record for the number of people receiving their first vaccination jag.
There were 63,178 new injections administered up to 8.30am today – taking Scotland above the one million mark, to 1,048,747.
Related news: 19 further Covid cases recorded
