THE most recent Covid figures show that a further 1316 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Scotland.
The figures also record 43 deaths of people who had tested positive.
The high number of positive tests may be a result of a backlog which built up in UK laboratories at the weekend, the Government said.
A total of 19,547 new tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the previous 24 hours with 7.5% of these returning positive results.
Of these tests, 5796 were from NHS Scotland labs while 13751 were from the UK Government testing programme.
READ MORE: Coronavirus Scotland LIVE: Mutant strain of Covid growing as cases rise
The Scottish Government announcement also confirmed that there were 1045 people in hospital with recently confirmed coronavirus yesterday, and 60 people in intensive care.
During the week ending December 22, Scotland has seen 141,417 tests with 7533 positive tests reported (5.3% of tests).
The Government data says that, since the beginning of the outbreak, 4326 people have died who have tested positive.
It also says 6092 deaths have been registered in Scotland where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate up to December 13.
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