Coronavirus: Potential Covid-19 cluster in Lanarkshire

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A potential cluster of Covid-19 cases is being investigated in North Lanarkshire, health officials have confirmed.

BBC Scotland understands the outbreak involves a call centre which carries out coronavirus contact tracing for Public Health England.

One employee said he believed at least seven of his colleagues had tested positive.

NHS Lanarkshire said it was aware of a number of “potentially linked cases”.

• Second daily jump in Covid-19 cases

Dr David Cromie, NHS Lanarkshire consultant in public health medicine, said: “We became aware this morning [19 July] of a number of potentially linked cases of coronavirus (Covid-19) in Lanarkshire.

“We instigated some immediate measures to reduce risk and are currently investigating the situation.”

Earlier, the Scottish government said 23 new cases of Covid-19 had been detected across Scotland in the past 24 hours, although only three of these were in the Lanarkshire health board area.

It follows an increase of 21 new cases on Saturday – the highest daily figure in almost a month.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was still a low number of cases and fluctuation was “to be expected”.

The proportion of positive tests remains well below 1%.

Health officials had earlier said they did not believe they were dealing with a linked cluster as the new cases this weekend which appeared in the official statistics were spread over a large area of Scotland.

Public Health England has been contacted for a comment.