Nicola Sturgeon has announced there are around 1,500 confirmed cases in Scotland of the so-called Indian variant, however there could be many more amongst the population.
Speaking at the coronavirus briefing from St Andrew's House in Edinburgh earlier today the First Minister said the situation is giving cause for concern but that vaccines are providing hope.
The number of people testing positive for the covid-19 has tripled in the last month with 992 new cases identified in the last 24-hour period.
Asked about the number of Indian or Delta strain cases there are in Scotland, Sturgeon said: "I think it's about 1,500 that's the accumulative confirmed cases, but the reason why I wouldn't put too much stress on that is because these are the confirmed cases.
"There will be many more than that because it is now the majority of our cases, so these are the cases that have been confirmed but that's not the actual number of cases of this variant there will be in the country."
While National Clinical Director Professor Jason Leitch said: "So we have a proxy figure for the Delta variant and it's whether you are S-gene positive or not, not every S-gene positive is the Delta but most of them are in Scotland.
"Right now somewhere between 65 and 70 per cent of new cases are S-gene positive, so I can't tell you with certainty that they will gnomically sequence as the Delta variant, but it's very likely that the are the Delta variants, so that means out of today's cases, 600 to 700, or almost certainly this new variant."
During the briefing the SNP leader attempted to calm fears by saying there are "strong indications" the vaccines are weakening the link between rises cases and hospitalisations.
She said: "There is an upside that we didn't have at the start of the first wave or even at the start of the second wave, and that is of course the vaccines.
"We do need to analyse the data on an ongoing basis so it's too early to be definitive but the strong indications we have so far are that vaccines are weakening the link between rising cases and cases of hospitalisations, intensive care and people dying.
"That is really encouraging and it is that that is giving us hope we can move beyond the very restrictive approach to dealing with Covid that has been necessary over the past year, or in fact more than a year now.
"Although that link appears to be weakening, it hasn't yet been completely broken."
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