A "SMALL number" of coronavirus cases in the past week have been linked to Rangers fans who broke lockdown to celebrate their team's victory in the Scottish Premiership, according to Scotland's chief medical officer.
Dr Smith said it was "too early" to know what impact, if any, the celebrations by Rangers supporters would have on case numbers, but said they were seeing an uptick in incidence in some part of the west of Scotland.
Hundreds of fans flocked to Glasgow city centre to celebrate after rivals Celtic failed to gain points against Dundee United on Sunday, March 7.
READ MORE: 'Disgraceful': Nicola Sturgeon slams Rangers fans celebrating league win
Dr Smith said contact tracing has established that some people who have tested positive for the infection in the past seven days were among the hundreds of revellers in Glasgow's George Square or went to events linked to it.
He said: "There are a small number who are revealing that they either took part in those celebrations or were at house parties that arose from that."
Dr Smith went on to say that the incubation period for Covid means there could be more linked cases emerging this week.
There have been few cases linked to large public events, such as the Black Lives Matter protests, but the risk tends to come when attendees car share or travel en masse using public transport together, and gather in one another's homes afterwards.
Dr Smith went on: "What we are seeing over the last seven days is an increase in the number of cases that we're associating with many of those areas, particularly Lanarkshire, Glasgow – and Glasgow city in particular – Ayrshire as well.
"How closely we can associate that with the events of last weekend is difficult."
It comes as the First Minister announced 456 coronavirus cases were recorded in the past 24 hours with a positivity rate of 4.7%.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon addresses blood clot fears as she announces vaccine acceleration
No deaths were registered among people who had tested positive in the previous 28 days, though registration offices tend to be closed over weekends.
Some 447 people were in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19, a decrease of 14 in 24 hours. Of those, 40 remained in intensive care.
It comes as data shows that there has been an increase the virus rates among younger working age Scots in the 20-24 and 25-44 age groups since the beginning of March.
"The most common age group for cases right now is between and ages of 25 and 44 - that working age population," said Dr Smith.
Nicola Sturgeon said she could not rule out the possibility that a rise in cases over the last week was linked to the return of schooling.
She said: “It is important to note that over the past seven days we have actually seen a slight increase in cases and we will be monitoring that carefully and it does provide us with a reminder that there is still no room for complacency and that our room for manoeuvre is limited.”
Children in P1-P3 returned to Scotland’s schools on February 22. On Monday, they were joined by classmates in P4-P7, with secondary school pupils returning to in-class learning part time.
Sturgeon said: “Can we rule out a link between schools partially reopening and a bit of an uptick in cases? No, I don’t think we can.
“And that will not be because particularly of transmission within schools but we know that when schools open there is just a little bit more movement generally as parents take children to school for example.”
Dr Smith said said the rise in cases was “not as great as I had wondered that we might see” and that he was “not overly concerned”.
He said: “We knew that as schools went back it a always going to be the possibility that, as people could go about their lives more, there would be more contact of one sort or another and that could lead to more transmission and I think that is exactly what we are seeing being played through in the figures just now.”
"It's easy to slip into a state of mind whereby the vaccination programme is going really well, people have maybe even had their first vaccination, and they look upon the risks differently," he continued.
"But this really emphasises for us clearly that the virus hasn't gone away.
"For those age groups where it's still going to be some time before they get their vaccination, it doesn't mean to say they won't become ill, that they won't be infected and pass it on to other people.
"If we're starting to see this now, it means we really have to be ever more careful and cautious about how we open up from here because there's a risk we could accelerate some of these increases."
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