Nicola Sturgeon under pressure to put new Covid hotspot back in Level 3 lockdown

Nicola Sturgeon will on Friday disclose whether she will reimpose Level 3 lockdown restrictions on four more Scottish council areas including one that overtook Glasgow to become the country's top Covid hotspot.

The First Minister will announce if East Renfrewshire will go back up a tier, only four days after it dropped to Level 2, meaning licensed premises would be prevented again from serving alcohol indoors and hugs with loved ones banned.

Cinemas would have to close again and people would be unable to legally visit another household indoors unless for an essential reason.

A surge in cases in the area continued yesterday, with its Covid rate rising from 101.5 cases per 100,000 people to 118.3. This is more than double the benchmark of 50 cases Ms Sturgeon has adopted for Level 2.

There also appeared to be little prospect the First Minister will allow Glasgow to drop to Level 2 next week, although its Covid rate started to plateau, increasing only from 109.9 cases per 100,000 people to 112.1.

Moray, the only other area of the mainland currently in Level 3, appeared to have got its outbreak under control, with its case rate dropping sharply to 36.5.

Covid rates in Midlothian (50.8), another area that appeared earlier this week to be in danger of going back into Level 3, dropped but they increased in Clackmannanshire to 56.3 and in East Dunbartonshire to 56.1.

This means there are now five local authority areas with case totals above Ms Sturgeon's threshold for being in Level 2 but four of them are currently in that tier and only one is in Level 3.

However, Ms Sturgeon is also under severe pressure from the beleaguered hospitality industry not to 'yo-yo' areas between tiers, arguing firms cannot "operate on the level of loss and uncertainty" that her system causes.

The First Minister triggered outrage last week by announcing that Glasgow would not go down to Level 2 with most of the rest of the country on Monday, leaving pubs and restaurants that had planned to reopen indoors thousands of pounds out of pocket.

Testing and vaccination have since been ramped up in the south side of the city, where the outbreak is worst. However, scientists have now said that the Indian variant, which drove the surge in Glasgow, is not as transmissible as originally feared.

Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, a research fellow in the department of infection and immunity at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, said that putting East Renfrewshire back into Level 3 would “certainly slow down the outbreak quicker”

She told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “It’s a very difficult decision at the moment and, we can probably compare this to Bolton down in England, where cases are now at 300 per 100,000, so they are about three times without measures in place.

“So, clearly, it means the outbreak in Glasgow is slowing down faster in that Level 3, and surge testing does work in slowing down that really big moving lorry a bit quicker, and that’s pretty much what we have to think about.”

She said it was "very likely" Moray will drop to Level 2 as "surge testing does work and we can get these outbreaks under control easier than we were able to last year.”

Tony Buchanan, leader of East Renfrewshire Council, told the BBC: "Cases are rising and we are more than aware of that - they are concerning, I don't think there is any doubt looking at these numbers.

"Within that though we are looking at a lot of household transmission, as opposed to wider community transmission."