A record number of new covid cases have been recorded in Scotland, with 6,835 new cases confirmed overnight.
Speaking at a covid briefing today, Nicola Sturgeon confirmed the steep rise in cases, as well as reporting that four people with a positive coronavirus test have died in the past 24 hours, bringing Scotland's death toll under this measurement to 8,103.
479 people are currently in hospital - 53 more than yesterday's figure - while 47 are in intensive care.
Despite the sudden rise, the First Minister said she "is not currently considering a circuit breaker lockdown".
She also said that the reason behind the sharp spike in cases in Scotland could be due to the return to of pupils to schools after the summer holidays.
She said: "In the past seven days we have reported more new cases than at any previous time in the pandemic, although I refer back to my point about higher levels of testing, but case numbers have roughly doubled over the course of the past seven days.
"It's important to point out that case numbers are rising across the UK just now, but after a period of slower increases in Scotland the rise here is particularly sharp at the moment.
"That is possibly, at least in part, a reflection of the fact that our schools return earlier, with the increased interactions that come with that, and although vaccination has significantly weakened the link between a high volume of new cases and serious harm to health it hasn't completely broken that link.
"So even if a much smaller proportion of people who get Covid now need to go to hospital, which is the case thankfully, basic arithmetic tells us that a small percentage of a large number is still going to be a significant number of people and indeed in recent days we have seen an increase of the number of people in hospital.
"Last Friday 312 people were in hospital with Covid, today that figure is 479."
Despite stating that a circuit breaker lockdown was not being considered, Ms Sturgeon said the current numbers are "still cause for concern" but added that "none of us want to go backwards to even limited restrictions".
