New weekly coronavirus cases in Lanarkshire increased slightly last week for the first time in a month.
At her daily press briefing in Edinburgh on Monday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon confirmed there had been 190 new cases in Lanarkshire on Sunday.
As a result, last week there were 1586 new Covid-19 cases in the region - a four per cent increase on the previous week.
Case numbers had fallen in each of the past three weeks after peaking at 2719 in mid October.
However, the “stubbornly high” prevalence of the virus in the region led the Scottish Government to introduce the highest level of coronavirus restrictions last week.
Ms Sturgeon today said that there was “anecdotal evidence” that people had been sticking to the new rules which came into effect on Friday, November 20.
She added: “I know that level four restrictions are hard for individuals and for businesses but we do believe they are necessary and that they will have an impact.”
Ms Sturgeon also said that there was “likely to be limited change” to the current level of restrictions in different areas across Scotland at the weekly review of restrictions tomorrow.
Following the decision to move Lanarkshire to level four, the region is set to remain under the toughest restrictions until December 11.
Plans to ease restrictions over Christmas are still under consideration by governments across the UK and Ms Sturgeon suggested that there would be a “slight and careful easing of the rules for a few days” however, “details of this approach are still to be finalised”.
In total, 18,306 people in Lanarkshire have now tested positive for Covid-19 and 582 people in the region have died after testing positive.
