Perth and Kinross has experienced its deadliest week of the coronavirus pandemic for the third week in a row after deaths rose by 61 per cent.
The week from January 18 to 24 saw COVID-19 recorded on a death certificate in the region 29 times. That was up from 18 the week before and 13 the week before that.
It brings the grim death toll to 193, with the region on the brink of recording over 200 deaths from the coronavirus in less than a year.The figures were revealed by the National Records of Scotland a day after the UK as a whole saw the number of deaths from the pathogen rise above 100,000.There is some cause for cautious optimism though, with infections continuing to fall.