Coronavirus / Three further Covid cases in two days – but prevalence of virus in islands remains low
SHETLAND recorded a further two Covid-19 cases on Monday following a single case on Sunday.
The latest seven-day total, which does not include today’s cases, is 10 giving a seven-day average of 43.6 cases per 100,000 people.
That is roughly a tenth of the national average, with much Scottish media coverage on Monday focusing on Scotland being the Covid-19 hotspot of Europe.
The number of new cases nationwide was down to 2,372 on Monday with 12.6 per cent of those tested giving a positive result. For the week up to Sunday 4 July Shetland’s positivity rate was 1.8 per cent.
At the weekend NHS Shetland, which held a walk-in vaccination clinic on Saturday, said it was inevitable there would be more cases as greater numbers of people are travelling to and from the islands.
With the UK’s vaccination campaign among the furthest advanced in the world, so far the huge increase in the number of cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19 has seen a much smaller rise in hospitalisations.
That has prompted the UK Government to signal its intent to abandon measures such as compulsory wearing of face masks in public places.
The Scottish Government hopes to remove many Covid-19 restrictions on 9 August, though there is no clarity at this stage whether the face mask policy would apply across all four home nations or just England.
However many scientists have expressed concern about the plans, citing the damage caused by long Covid and the risk of new variants emerging at a time when many UK citizens are yet to receive a second vaccine dose.
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