Nicola Sturgeon said Covid-19 cases must be reduced before winter when NHS is under increased pressure and also to allow easing in all parts of Scotland before Christmas.

The First Minister said that by going into level four for a short time, the next three weeks, there was a better chance it would be able to move out of level three down into level two.

Without the tougher action, Ms Sturgeon said "level three would probably be in place for some time yet. Moving to level four might provide a quicker route out of three."

The Government and its advisers look at a series of measurements when deciding which level each od Scotland's 32 council areas should be in.

They are the rate of positive cases per 100,000 of population, the number of positive cases, the forecast for the next few weeks, the forecast for the ability of hospital capacity to cope and the forecast for intensive care capacity to cope.

They are assigned one of either very low, low, moderate, high and very high

Glasgow was categorised as high for rate per 100,000, very high for number of cases and moderate for the future forecast.

For both hospital and ICU capacity it was marked as ‘Of Concern’.

Glasgow city and North Lanarkshire were the only areas in Scotland where the highest category of very high was applied to any of the thre measurments for covid cases. 

Glasogw was ranked very high for positive cases.

The Glasgow Times reported the  seven day figure using data from Public Health Scotland the most up to date was 1745 cases over seven days.

Ms Sturgeon said that Glasgow also had the highest rate of cases per 100,000 in Scotland.

She said:  "In the seven days up to Friday, Scotland as a whole had just over 140 new cases of COVID per 100,000 people.

"All of the areas moving to Level 4 were above that level - ranging from West Lothian, with a rate of 158 cases per 100,000, to Glasgow with 277."

The reasons for the city moving from three to level four were 

"No sustained improvement in last week, trends show some signs of plateau.

"Continued evidence of projected pressure on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

"In anticipation of winter pressures it is necessary to bring in additional protective measures to ensure that there is sufficient NHS capacity to meet demand."