Two residents have died and others have tested positive amid a Covid outbreak at a care home.
Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership (DGHSCP) confirmed the outbreak happened at its Belmont site in Stranraer.
A total of 12 residents and staff have tested positive for the virus since the first cases were detected last week.
The health partnership confirmed it had taken immediate action to put all measures in place to contain further spread of the virus.
A DGHSCP spokesman said: “The operator of this care home has been faced with a challenging and very difficult situation but full credit is due to them and their very dedicated staff for the responses that have been mounted.
“Covid-19 is very highly infectious, which means that containing its spread is not easy – even when it is being met with all the correct protocols, including regular testing and vaccinations.
“Currently, cases of the coronavirus are still being recorded in high numbers across all four localities in Dumfries and Galloway – Annandale and Eskdale, Nithsdale, Stewartry and Wigtownshire – and with evidence that it is being transmitted within the community.”
The latest Government coronavirus data released on Wednesday showed Dumfries and Galloway recorded 60 new cases in the last 24 hours.
Scotland in total recorded 4,917 new cases and 30 coronavirus-linked deaths since the day before.
The data indicates the current death toll under the daily measure – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – is 8,293.
The daily test positivity rate was 9.2%, down from 11.4% the previous day.
There were 1,079 people in hospital on Tuesday with recently confirmed Covid-19, up 15 on the day before, with 91 in intensive care, up two.
So far, 4,146,847 people have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccination and 3,791,597 have received a second dose.
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 here