NHS Forth Valley say no links after spike in Covid-19 cases

Almost one-third of those confirmed with coronavirus in Scotland during this period were in the region.

After three days with no-one found to have the virus, last Friday six cases were revealed by the Scottish Government when it announced the daily figures.

Since then a further seven cases have been discovered following testing.Across Scotland in this period there have been 45 positive cases recorded.

However, NHS Forth Valley has said that the local cases do not appear to be linked.

A spokesperson said: “The numbers published can vary day-to-day depending on the timing of when the results are reported as there is a cut off time for the daily updates so not all positive tests published on the one day necessarily happened at the same time.

“We have already carried out contact tracing for the six cases reported on Friday and this has not identified a link between these cases.

“We have also reviewed the five cases reported today and again can find no link so these are not clusters or hotspots and are not the same as the recent cases in Dumfries & Galloway where there was a cluster of cases in the community with a common link.”

They added: “Part of the reason for the increase is because of the increase in testing to cover a wide group of people – care home staff are now being offered testing on a weekly basis, we are testing any patients over 70 who are admitted to hospital and we are also now testing any patients who are coming in for elective surgery as part their pre-op assessment – these numbers are starting to increase as we reschedule some of the operations which were postponed earlier in the year.

“Anyone in the community with symptoms can also access testing or request a test kit.”

There are currently fewer than five patients in Forth Valley hospitals with Covid-19, however, there are currently 22 in a hospital who are suspected to have the illness.

There have been no deaths related to Covid-19 in the Falkirk Council area in the last week.The number of deaths linked to coronavirus locally remains at 134, while in Forth Valley it is 237, one more than last week.

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