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The Prime Minister says that nursing home death rates in the rest of the UK may be higher than the figures suggest.
The number of people dying with coronavirus in Scotland has decreased for the second consecutive week.
Scottish national registries said 415 deaths have been linked to the virus last week, 110 fewer than the week before.
The number of people dying in care homes has also decreased.
But the figures suggest that people
living in the most disadvantaged areas
they were more than twice as likely to die as those with fewer resources.
Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the drop in deaths “offers additional and sustained signs of hope,” but said she would continue “to err on the side of caution” with closure restrictions.
The total number of people whose deaths have been linked to Covid-19 is now 3,213.
The data showed that 76% of these deaths were from people age 75 and older, and 91% of those who died in April had an underlying health condition.
The most common pre-existing conditions were dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, accounting for 31% of all coronavirus-related deaths, followed by ischemic heart disease with 13%.
More than half of all deaths recorded by the virus continue to occur in nursing homes, but the percentage has dropped from 60% to 57% and the number of deaths from 314 to 238.
fake pictures
The death rate in nursing homes has also decreased
Ms. Sturgeon said the death rate “was still too high, but it was decreasing,” and that the number of people in hospital and intensive care was also decreasing.
She told the Scottish Parliament: “I easily recognize that no trend in statistics can comfort anyone who has lost a loved one to this virus.”
“But these numbers offer additional and sustained signs of hope.
“That does not mean that we can still relax, there are still too many cases, and the rate of reproduction of the virus is even higher than we would like.”
The prime minister said that if the virus transmission rate, the “R number”, continued to decline, “we will be able to gradually relax the blockade.”
However, she said that “for now the message remains the same,” and that continuing the blockade was “bringing forward the time when these restrictions can begin to ease.”
NRS said the total number of deaths recorded in Scotland in the week of May 4-10 was 1,434 (39%) more than the average number of deaths recorded in the same week in the past five years.
This was a 245 decrease in the number of so-called “excess deaths” recorded in the previous week.
Of these 400 excess deaths, 96% were deaths where Covid-19 was the underlying cause.
Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw said the figures suggested that the Scottish government’s approach to testing in nursing homes had been an “absolute failure” and that the country was still “far behind” in other parts of the UK.
He added: “It is clear that nothing like focusing enough on testing in nursing homes, and that it has been a very costly mistake.
“The Prime Minister’s refusal to accept that his approach to testing in nursing homes has been inadequate is nothing short of astonishing.”
Some people in England who are unable to work from home returned to their workplace on Wednesday, when the UK government begins easing some of its closure measures.
But there has been concern on the part of some travelers that the trains and buses were too busy to observe the rules of social distancing.
Sturgeon has said he still doesn’t think it’s safe to introduce a similar relaxation in Scotland, warning that the country still has a “long way to go” despite signs that the impact of the virus is dwindling.
She said it was “completely legitimate” that England
get out of the block faster
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were supported by scientific evidence, and emphasized that this did not mean that the four-nation approach was crumbling.
Some workers in England returned to work on Wednesday when closing restrictions began to ease.
The prime minister said the data suggested that progress made in Scotland was still “fragile” and that lifting the restrictions too soon could allow the virus to “spiral out of control again.”
He added: “My opinion is that it is better now to err on the side of caution. I prefer that the price of being wrong is that people remain locked up for other days, not be measured in unnecessary deaths.”
Ms Sturgeon spoke as Prime Minister Boris Johnson also downplayed the differences in approach between England and the delegated administrations.
Johnson told the Commons that there had been “intense” cooperation in the four nations of the United Kingdom since the outbreak began.
He added: “I think that if you look at all the measures that we are taking as a country, there is much more that unites us that divides us and we will advance together.”
