RUSHES: Coronavirus: Nicola Sturgeon press conference October 20th

Coronavirus: Nicola Sturgeon press conference October 20th; ** 1 of 3 ** SCOTLAND: Edinburgh: St Andrew's House: INT Nicola Sturgeon MSP (First Minister of Scotland) arriving / press conference opening statement SOT. - Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. I will start with the usual report of the daily COVID statistics. The total number of positive cases reported yesterday was 1,456. I would point out that this includes some catch up of test results delayed over the past few days which you recall I spoke about yesterday. The number today represents 19.9 per cent of people newly tested, and 11.4 per cent of the total number of tests that were carried out. And again you will recall me explaining yesterday the different - and we think more accurate - approach we are now taking to calculating this positivity percentage. I’m will continue to report both the old and new measures this week, but from next week, I’ll report only the new - which is the latter of the two figures I gave today - 11.4 per cent 500 of the new cases are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 393 in Lanarkshire, 198 in Lothian and 116 in Ayrshire and Arran. The remaining cases are across 9 other health board areas. The Western Isles was the only health board area not to report a new case yesterday. Although Orkney and Shetland only have 1 each reported today. The total number of cases in Scotland since the start of the pandemic is now 49,164. I can also confirm that 824 people are in hospital currently – which is an increase of 70 from yesterday. And 69 people are in intensive care, which is 8 more than the figure reported yesterday. I also regret to say that in the past 24 hours, 15 further deaths have been registered of a patient who first tested positive over the previous 28 days. And that takes the total number of deaths, under that measure to 2,625. That reminds us of the devastating impact that this virus is continuing to have on families across the country. I...