Good afternoon, colleagues. We will begin First Minister’s questions shortly, but before we do, the First Minster will give an update on the Covid-19 situation.

I will give a short update on the daily statistics. The total number of positive cases reported yesterday is 668, which is 10.8 per cent of people who were newly tested yesterday. That takes the total number of confirmed cases to 29,912. Two hundred and forty-four of those new cases are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 166 are in Lothian and 123 are in Lanarkshire. The remaining 135 are spread across nine other health board areas.

There are 154 people in hospital as of today, which is an increase of 15 from yesterday; I point out to the chamber that that is also an increase of 70 since I updated the chamber at this time last week. There are 17 people in intensive care, which is an increase of two since yesterday, and I regret to report that, in the past 24 hours, three additional deaths have been registered of patients who first tested positive for Covid in the previous 28 days. The total number of deaths under that daily measurement is now 2,522. Of course, I offer my condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one

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We will shortly publish our latest estimate of the R number, which we do every Thursday. The estimate confirms our view that the R number is currently above 1 and possibly as high as 1.7. That partly reflects the impact of the outbreaks that we have seen in the past two weeks, including in student accommodation, but as a point of perspective it is also worth stressing that, because that estimate, as the R number always does, relies on past data, it does not yet take account of any impact of the new measures that we announced last week.

However, all the figures that I have just reported demonstrate why we announced those measures last week, because it is imperative that we get the virus back under control. Those figures also explain why I will confirm to the chamber today, as I gave an indication of last week, that we are postponing the route map changes for which we had previously given an indicative date of 5 October. I hope members agree that it would not be sensible to ease the restrictions that are still in place while infection rates are rising and we are working to bring them back down. We will review those restrictions again by 15 October. However, if we need to take further action before that to curb the spread of the virus, we will not hesitate to do so, but we would of course report that to Parliament.

For the moment, the key way of bringing the virus back under control is for all of us to stick to the current rules and guidance. I will round off by briefly setting out what we are all being asked to do. With some limited exceptions, nobody should be visiting each other’s homes at the moment. When we are outdoors, or in indoor public places, we must not meet in groups of any more than six people from a maximum of two households. We are also asking everyone to work from home if possible, not to car share unless essential and to download the Protect Scotland app. More than 1.3 million of us have now done that and I can advise the chamber that the app has already notified more than 2,000 people of the need to self-isolate, some of whom would not otherwise have been contact traced at all.

Finally, I urge everybody to remember FACTS: face coverings; avoid crowded places; clean hands and hard surfaces; keep 2m distance; and self-isolate and book a test if you experience any of the symptoms of Covid.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide the update, Presiding Officer.

The Presiding Officer:

Thank you, First Minster. I remind members that I will continue the approach of taking all the supplementary questions after question 7, but feel free to press your request-to-speak button should you have a Constituency or a general open supplementary at any point.