Edinburgh is to become a 'coronavirus hotspot' over the festive period according to a Covid forecast by experts who analyse case data.
It comes as Edinburgh overtook Glasgow in cases for the first time today, with 140 new cases confirmed in the Lothians region compared to 109 in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area.
It looks like the unfortunate trend is set to continue over the Christmas period: according to the modelling Edinburgh will have a 81% probability of registering hundreds of cases in the week beginning 20 December.
And just two days after Christmas Day on the 27 December, Edinburgh is predicted to have an 88 percent chance of registering over 100 cases that week, while Glasgow's chance of becoming a Covid hotspot will drop to just 55 percent.
According to the coronavirus forecast, it is also bad news for East Lothian and Midlothian, with both the regions predicted to register similar levels of cases to the capital.
West Lothian is predicted to have fewer cases than all of the other NHS Lothian health boards with the region only predicted to have a 20 percent chance of registering more than 100 cases on the week of 27 December.
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Things are not predicted to get any better in the New Year, with Edinburgh still predicted to have an 88 percent chance of registering over 100 cases the week beginning 3 January.
The projections assume that lockdown levels and behaviour patterns do not change for about a week before the end of observations. The site also notes that an increase in cases in an area could be an increase in testing rather than an increase in transmission.
You can check out the data for yourself here.
