ABERDEEN’S coronavirus lockdown is coming to an end, with a number of restrictions eased at midnight.

The Government says the city should now be “broadly in line with the rest of Scotland”.

That means the five-mile travel limit, restrictions on gatherings and limitations on hospital and care home visits have all been lifted.

However, pubs, cafes and restaurants will have to wait until Wednesday and they’ll only be allowed to re-open “once an environmental health check has been completed”.

The agreement to end the lockdown came after a tense meeting between the Government and the local council.

Councillors in the ruling Tory-Labour Aberdeen administration very publicly disagreed with the First Minister’s decision to put the city into lockdown for a third week.

Yesterday, after an initial two-hour meeting ended in stalemate, the Tory co-leader of the Aberdeen Council, Douglas Lumsden, told the Press and Journal that the city had been treated unfairly.

He said: “We have infection rates elsewhere in the country that are much higher than ours and we have heard from health professionals that the Aberdeen outbreak is completely under control.

“It doesn’t feel right that we are the ones with restrictions when it’s others with higher infection rates.”

The city was put into lockdown after a cluster of coronavirus cases was traced through the city’s pubs.

A total of 427 cases have been identified in the Grampian Health Board area since July 26. Of these, 259 are associated with the same cluster linked to Aberdeen pubs, and 1258 contacts have now been identified from those.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon thanked the city for sticking with the lockdown.

She said: “I am grateful to people in Aberdeen – the local authority and health board, local businesses, and everyone who lives there – for complying so well with the rules that were put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19. In particular I am grateful for the understanding of the businesses that were required to close in order to help beat the virus.

“It’s due to the commitment of people in the city, as well as world-class contact tracing, that means we are now able to lift some of these measures from Monday and then again from Wednesday, but it is vitally important that everyone follows the FACTS rules in order to prevent an outbreak of this scale occurring again. That way we can move forward and get our economy, our society and our lives generally back to as much normality as possible.”

Susan Webb, director of public health for NHS Grampian urged caution. She said: “We must be cautious to ensure the progress we have made is maintained.

“Crucially, we must all be observing physical distancing from those not in our immediate household, whether at work, meeting socially, in a supermarket or out for exercise and recreation. It is also vitally important that anyone identified as a close contact of a detected case follows the guidance on isolating for 14 days.”

The easing of Aberdeen’s lockdown came as Scotland saw another jump in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus.

The latest official figures show 83 new confirmed cases.

Of the new cases, 37 were in the NHS Tayside area, where authorities are dealing with an outbreak at the 2 Sisters food processing plant in Coupar Angus.

Sixteen of the new cases were in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area and 11 in NHS Lothian.

That’s the first time the number of cases in the Lothian area has been in double figures since June 12.

This brings the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases to 19,811.

There was no increase in the number of people who have died after a positive test.

The latest daily figures showed that 0.9% of those tested for the virus were positive.

Meanwhile, right-wing think tank Reform has urged the Scottish Government to work with Boris Johnson’s Government to deal with the rising numbers of jobless in Scotland.

The report called for a major expansion of the Individual Training Account (ITA) scheme.