THE Covid-19 pandemic is “accelerating in Scotland”, national clinical director Jason Leitch said yesterday. He was speaking after more than 700 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Scotland in 24 hours.

The daily total of 714 is the highest number of cases confirmed in a day since mass testing began, and 156 more than Friday’s figure.

The Scottish government said 11.5% of those newly tested in the past 24 hours had been positive for Covid-19.

The number of people in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19 has also risen by 10 to 99.

No further deaths had been reported in the previous 24 hours, but one death was confirmed from the previous day, bringing the total to 2511.

Leitch said rises of “300 to 400 to 600” in the number of cases were now expected to be the trend, rather than smaller increases.

“Our pandemic in Scotland is presently accelerating – and we need to manage it,” he said.

Almost 3500 new cases have been confirmed in Scotland over the past seven days.

Glasgow is currently seeing the biggest rises, recording a weekly case rate of 162.5 per 100,000 people on Thursday.

The rate is more than twice that of North Lanarkshire, which has the second highest rate among local authorities. It is also the highest seen in Scotland since the start of the outbreak in March.

More caases are being detected because the number of tests being carried out is far higher than at the peak of Scotland’s outbreak in April, but the percentage of positive tests is also rising.

Leitch said restrictions on households mixing indoors, which were extended across the whole of Scotland on Tuesday, would take a while to have an affect. “It’s two, three weeks before you show any difference.”

“And we’ve now had universities and colleges back and you can see we now have hundreds of cases inside those institutions.”

NHS Fife has confirmed seven workers from Kettle Produce, in Balmalcolm in Fife, have tested positive for Covid-19. It said all confirmed cases had mild symptoms and were currently isolating at home.

Public health teams in Scotland are currently dealing with a number of large outbreaks among students living in shared accommodation.

More than 170 students have tested positive in halls of residence at the University of Glasgow and there have been other outbreaks in Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Police were called to break up a number of parties at the University of Edinburgh’s main halls of residence. Officers said they had dispersed “numerous” groups on Friday night at Pollock Halls of Residence, where about 1900 students live.

Students in Scotland were told not to go to pubs, parties or restaurants this weekend in an attempt to slow a spate of coronavirus outbreaks.

The University of Edinburgh said a “small number” of students had tested positive.

Some of the positive cases are understood to be at one of the Holland House blocks, which is part of Pollock Halls.

A spokesperson for the university said it was “not asking for whole halls of student accommodation to self-isolate”.

Police Scotland confirmed they were called to Pollock Halls of Residence, on the edge of Holyrood Park, after “informants” raised concerns the parties were breaching regulations that prevent more than one household mixing indoors.

Inspector David Hughes said: “Police Scotland attended and we’ve spoken to a number of the parties and dispersed those individuals. No arrests were made and no fines were issued. It must feel strange to people of that age and you can understand their frustrations in relation to the current regulations.’’