The number of people requiring hospital treatment for covid-19 has now matched the highest level witnessed during the first wave of the virus.

ICU admissions however are still below the previous peak but are rising quickly. Current covid-19 hospital cases are now matching figures from the April peak of 1500, the latest figures show.

Out of those admissions, 100 are in intensive care units – half of the number requiring ICU treatment in April.

Asked at today’s government virus briefing whether that was down to improved treatments for people who had contracted the virus, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said no one should take the ICU admission rate as a sign that intensive care was not under pressure.

She said: “[ICU] is under severe pressure because it’s not just covid patients who need ICU. If you’re in car accident or have a heart attack or something else you then we want a bed to be available to you.

“And there are over 200 patients in total in intensive care; 231 patients in total yesterday compared with 220 the day before and that number is above the baseline capacity of ICU.

“That is above what it would normally be in a winter. So, ICU is under severe pressure it’s just that we’re not seeing the same level of pressure from covid in ICU as we were earlier on but don’t think take any assurance from that that our hospital services are not working extremely hard.”

Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith added: “There is no doubt that some of these units are under incredible pressure coping with the type of patients and the complexity of patients that they are seeing just now.

“All throughout the last ten months we have seen this group of very specialist staff across healthcare really step up and they have provided us with really superb support and treatment of the population who have come through their wards.

“There is no doubt about it that the treatments have really progressed since those initial months in March and April of last year when we started to see people start to go through intensive care.

“We understand a whole lot more about the disease and how it progresses and of course we now understand more about how to manage that, particularly in terms of the respiratory support that people need.

“So, there are different ways that we now support those patients as well. Using other means of making sure that we maximise their oxygen to ensure that we support them as their body deals with the infection.

“We’ve also got new treatments which are available to us which we didn’t have right back in the beginning that can influence the course of that disease particularly the treatments like dexamethasone which when used in the right way can really influence the outcomes for people as well.

“And I expect more treatments will continue to come through as some of the trials begin to report their findings and new medications and new approaches that we can use in these areas as well.

“We shouldn’t assume that because the numbers are lower that these units are any less busy or dealing with any less complexity because they are not.

“What we are seeing is an awful lot more tools in our chest and the ability to manage these people and influence the outcomes that they have.”

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