Shetland’s unofficial Covid-19 cases estimated at more than 200

More than 200 Shetland folk are thought to be “symptomatic” with Covid-19, according to an online app.

While the number of official Covid cases and related deaths have remained unchanged for more than a week – health leaders have warned the virus has not gone away yet.

NHS Shetland chief executive Michael Dickson has highlighted numbers reported on the “Covid Radar” app, which estimates one per cent of the Shetland population is symptomatic. That would equate to around 230 people from a population of around 23,000.

In the last few hours, however, the figure has fall to 0.9 per cent of the population.

The app claims to be the largest community monitoring of Covid-19 in the world – and bases its estimates on information from millions of  the Covid Symptom Tracker app.

Mr Dickson, discussing the figures on his latest weekly Facebook broadcast, said the official case numbers did not give the full picture.

“Just because we’ve not had any new confirmed cases doesn’t mean it’s gone away,” he added.

“It’s likely to be here for a long time.”

He said that around five per cent of NHS Shetland’s workforce was off work because either they or someone in their household had symptoms.

Last week, Mr Dickson said that while the virus may have reached its peak, the battle against Covid-19 was likely to be a “marathon not a sprint”.

Since then, the total number of confirmed cases has remained unchanged at 54.

The National Records of Scotland’s weekly bulletin, published on Wednesday, stated six people had died in circumstances related to Covid-19 – the same number as reported the previous week