COVID-19 statistical report
26 August 2020

About this release

This weekly release by Public Health Scotland presents data on COVID-19 across NHSScotland.

Main points

• Between 28 May to 23 August 2020, 2,330 individuals were recorded in the contact tracing software, from which 10,091 contacts have been traced.

• As at 23 August 2020, there have been 19,877 confirmed COVID-19 cases, equating to 363.8 confirmed cases per 100,000 population.
• As at 23 August 2020, 456,917 people in Scotland have tested negative.
• Between 1 March 2020 and 19 August 2020, there had been 5,970 admissions to hospital with a laboratory confirmed test of COVID-19, and 11 in the most recent week.
• As at 23 August 2020, 535 confirmed COVID-19 patients have been treated in an Intensive Care Unit. In the last week there were 0 patients who have ever been confirmed COVID-19 that were admitted to ICU.
• There were 183,695 people who arrived in Scotland from outside the UK from 22 June to 23 August, of which 49,789 were required to quarantine and 3,303 were contacted by the National Contact Tracing Centre.
• A sizeable proportion of excess deaths in Scotland during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been coded as being directly due to COVID-19. A new report on summarising analysis of which underlying causes have contributed to these non-COVID-19 excess deaths can be found here.

Wider impact detailed analysis

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a wider impact on health and care as a result of the lockdown, economic pressures and changes to health services.

A range of analyses on the impact of COVID-19 across aspects of NHS Scotland is available on the interactive information tool (external website).

Background

On 1 March 2020, the first person in Scotland was tested positive for COVID-19. On the 17 March NHS Scotland was placed in an emergency footing by the Cabinet Secretary. Schools closed on 20 March and the country went into lockdown on 23 March. Scotland entered phase one of easing out of lockdown on 29 May, phase two on 19 June and phase three on 10 July. Schools started to re-open from 11 August.

Since the start of the outbreak, Public Health Scotland (PHS) has been working closely with the Scottish Government and health and care colleagues to support the surveillance and monitoring of COVID-19 amongst the population. There is a large amount of data being regularly published regarding COVID-19 (for example, Coronavirus in Scotland – Scottish Government and Deaths involving coronavirus in Scotland – National Records of Scotland). This report complements the range of existing data currently available.