THE latest Covid-19 case numbers for Helensburgh and Lomond, and the whole of Argyll and Bute, have been released by Public Health Scotland.

They show an increase in confirmed positive tests over the past seven days, though numbers remain lower than for most other Scottish council areas.

As in the past, the highest numbers of positive tests in Argyll and Bute are located in Helensburgh and Lomond, though actual case numbers in each neighbourhood remain in single figures.

The rolling seven-day total positive cases in Argyll and Bute for the past week are as follows:

Week to Feb 24 - 8 cases, rate of 9.3 per 100,000 per 100,000 people

Week to Feb 25 - 10 cases, 11.6 per 100,000 people

Week to Feb 26 - 9 cases, 10.5 per 100,000 people

Week to Feb 27 - 15 cases, 17.5 per 100,000 people

Week to Feb 28 - 16 cases, 18.6 per 100,000 people

Week to March 1 - 18 cases, 21.0 per 100,000 people

Week to March 2 - 19 cases, 22.1 per 100,000 people

Helensburgh East had four confirmed positive tests in the seven-day periods to February 25 and 26, rising to five for the week to February 27 and 28, and six for the seven days to both March 1 and 2.

Lomond Shore – including Cardross and most of the west shore of Loch Lomond – had three positive tests in the seven days to February 27 and again to February 28, four in the week to March 1, and five in the week to March 2.

For all other neighbourhoods – in Helensburgh and Lomond, and throughout Argyll and Bute – case numbers were between zero and two throughout the period, a range for which Public Health Scotland does not publish exact numbers to protect patient confidentiality.

Meanwhile, in the course of the past week more than 2,000 people in Argyll and Bute have received their first dose of one of the country's Covid vaccines.

By February 26, when the daily vaccination data for each council area was first published, 29,313 people in Argyll and Bute had been vaccinated – but by March 5, that had risen by 2,193 to a total of 31,506.

That means 43.2 per cent of Argyll and Bute's residents have now received their first dose.

In addition, 1,431 people in Argyll and Bute – 2 per cent of the area's population – had received their second vaccine dose as of Thursday, March 4.

Those figures compare to 40.9 per cent (first dose) and 2.4 per cent (second dose) for the whole NHS Highland area.

For Scotland as a whole, the figures are 1,717,672 (37.8 per cent) for the first dose, and 108,197 (2.4 per cent) for the second dose.

Public Health Scotland has not yet disclosed vaccination data for individual neighbourhoods.