Scotland's failure to qualify for the knock-out stage of Euro 2020 helped drive down the number of people north of the Border catching covid, a top government scientific adviser has claimed.
Steve Clarke's side crashed out at the group stage last month despite a spirited performance against England at Wembley.
Daily covid case numbers in Scotland climbed to a peak of more than 4,000 per day in late June but have been steadily dropping since.
Public health officials previously estimated that at least 400 Tartan Army fans were at Wembley while infectious with covid for the crunch match against England on June 18.
Widely shared images on social media showed trains heading south out of Glasgow and Edinburgh were rammed with fans, with many paying no attention to social distancing or face covering rules - prompting fears the event was driving up case numbers.
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told the BBC there was some evidence the decline in cases may have been triggered by the team's exit from the Euros, although the downward trend has continued since then.
"There has been a lot of conversation about a football-related bounce in infections and whether we were seeing a wave-within-a-wave," the Scottish Government adviser said.
"In Scotland though it's now starting to look like it's a longer-term trend. We haven't seen any sign of cases picking up [since the football finished]".
The number of new coronavirus cases has continued to fall in Scotland, with 1,237 people testing positive for the virus in the past 24 hours.
The latest daily figure was the lowest recorded for just over a month – although Public Health Scotland said it had not received any data from NHS Tayside laboratories since just before 5pm on Friday, July 23.
Public Health Scotland added it was working with NHS Tayside to “resolve this issue”.
The daily coronavirus figures for Sunday July 25 showed an increase in the number of tests that were positive, rising from 6.1% to 7.5%.
There were no new deaths reported although registration offices are usually closed at the weekend.
The number of people in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19 was 480 – an increase of two on the previous day’s total.
The number of people in intensive care with the virus also increased, going up from 60 to 64.
Meanwhile a total of 3,997,105 people have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, including 3,079,492 Scots who have had both doses.
