A further two people in Renfrewshire have died of Covid-19 as locals are forced to wait days for the results of coronavirus tests.
The fatalities take the total number of people to have died of the virus in the local authority area to 210.
The tragic deaths - recorded on October 11 and 13 - come in the same week in which 323 new Covid-19 cases were identified across the region.
Hospital admissions are increasing and the pressure on Covid-19 services at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital are growing, health chiefs have said.
This month so far, 759 people have tested positive for the deadly disease in Renfrewshire.
But the numbers are expected to skyrocket even further as Renfrewshire residents who underwent tests last week are facing lengthy delays for their results.
The Scottish Government said the delays were as a result of capacity problems at the UK Government run Lighthouse Lab, which processes samples taken from people at Glasgow Airport’s drive thru testing facility.
The UK Government, which denied any serious problems at the Glasgow-based lab, did state however that tests from Scotland were being diverted to other areas of the UK for processing.
The delays have created “artificially” low numbers of people testing positive for the disease in the past few days, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said, with numbers falling drastically over the weekend.
In Renfrewshire, the delayed results saw just one Covid-19 positive test reported on Saturday and none yesterday.
By contrast, 81 cases were reported in a single day on Thursday.
Ms Sturgeon said: “We are working very hard with the UK Government to ensure turnaround times, particularly for tests that are already taking longer than we would want, are as quick as possible.
“When I looked at the UK Government statement I’m not sure they are denying or challenging the substance of what I am saying - it recognises that a large number of tests have been diverted to labs elsewhere in the UK.
“We hope that redirection will have stopped as of yesterday.”
Seven months into the pandemic, more than 1/7th of the population of Scotland has already been tested for Covid-19.
