Glasgow has "not yet turned a corner" and will remain in Level Three for a further week.
The city will be the only council area in Scotland still subject to Level Three restrictions from tomorrow, with Moray set to move into Level Two from midnight while East Renfrewshire remains at Level Two despite its case rate overtaking Glasgow.
The latest data shows that seven-day incidence of the virus in East Renfrewshire had reached 118 per 100,000, compared to 112 per 100,000 in Glasgow.
However, Nicola Sturgeon said the data indicated that infections in East Renfrewshire were being driven by "specific household clusters" compared to the widespread community transmission being found in the southside of Glasgow.
READ MORE: Covid deaths among younger Scots overtake over-65s for first time in pandemic
The First Minister said extensive public health interventions including increased testing, vaccinations and enhanced contact tracing had been targeted to the worst affected parts of the city in the G41 and G42 postcodes which form the bulk of her own constituency, but this had not yet suppressed the outbreak.
She said: "Despite all of the efforts over the past 10 days, cases are still rising in Glasgow and we are fairly certain that the increase is being driven by the fast-spreading April-02 ['Indian' B1.617.2] variant.
"Last week, to give you some context, we were seeing 71 new cases for every 100,000 of the population; that's now risen as of this moment in time to 112.
"That increase will be partly due to the fact there being more testing but the percentage of positive tests over the past week has also increased from 3.1% to 4%. So, in summary, we don't think we have turned a corner yet in Glasgow."
Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government "needs a bit more time to be more confident than we are just now that vaccination will stop the rising case numbers today becoming sharply rising hospital and severe illness numbers in a couple of weeks from now".
She added: "Regrettably, I can confirm that Glasgow will stay in Level Three for a further week at this stage.
"I know how unwelcome this will be for individuals and businesses but a I genuinely hope it will not be for too much longer."
READ MORE: New data reveals surge in Indian variant in Scotland
On East Renfrewshire, Ms Sturgeon said there had been just 17 cases of Covid detected in the area yesterday compared to 166 in Glasgow.
"More importantly, many more of the cases that have been reported in East Renfrewshire can be traced to specific household clusters than in Glasgow where transmission appears to be much more widespread."
It comes after the latest update on UK variants from Public Health England showed that 136 cases of the B1.617.2 variant of concern have now been detected in Scotland, up from 35 a week ago.
The number of people in hospital with Covid has also increased in the Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire areas in recent days.
READ MORE: My second vaccination is coming. And then what?
In NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde it doubled from 21 on Sunday to 43 by Thursday, but has fallen back to 41 today.
In Lanarkshire, the number of Covid patients has climbed from 10 to 15.
The Indian variant is believed to be more transmissible than the previously dominant Kent strain, but it is not yet clear exactly how much more transmissible it is.
Scientists have suggested it is somewhere in a range of 20 to 60%, with anything over 40% predicted to cause a surge in hospital admissions unless restrictions on socialising remain in place.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel