The Scottish Government has identified another confirmed case of Covid-19, with an "independent connection" to the Cumberland Infirmary.

It was announced this afternoon by Scotland's national clinical director, Professor Jason Leitch, that the total number of confirmed cases that form part of the Covid-19 outbreak in the Annan and Gretna area has now reached 11.

"There are now 11 positive cases in that outbreak," he said at the First Minister's daily coronavirus briefing earlier this afternoon.

"It’s important to understand that the new positive in the last 24 hours is not connected to the other households in this outbreak in any way.

"It has an independent connection to the Carlisle hospital.

"In that sense we’re counting it as one outbreak across both of the jurisdictions."

Professor Leitch added that the Scottish Government is "reaching out" to all Cumberland Infirmary staff who live in Dumfries and Galloway.

"We’re reaching out to all the staff at the hospital who live in Dumfries and Galloway, with a Scottish residential postcode, and are offering them anything they need, in terms of testing if that’s appropriate, and other support if they wish to speak to us," he said.

Professor Leitch confirmed that there are 23 individuals currently in the contact tracing system.

"They have all been spoken to, and they have all been offered testing and they have all been told to self-isolate. We believe they are all self-isolating," he said.

"At this point, and it’s a little bit early to say – at this point we believe that is the end of the contact tracing.

"But we can never be absolutely sure. It’s not an exact science."

He praised the public health teams from both Dumfries & Galloway and Cumbria, as well as the public, for their "fantastic job in controlling this outbreak."

However Professor Leitch added the caveat that it was possible that more cases will be identified in the coming days.

He added that testing is now complete at the two Alpha Solway factories in Annan identified as being places more likely to contain individuals that have come into contact with the outbreak.

"We will get the results from there mostly today," he said.

The second day of testing is ongoing at the Young’s Seafood factory, also in Annan.

Professor Leitch stressed: "There is no suggestion that these outbreaks either began in these institutions, or have spread in these institutions.

"There is just a contact connections to these institutions, and as such we are treating them as higher risk, and taking a precautionary approach to testing."

There will be another meeting of the incident management team set up to oversee the response to this outbreak at 4pm.