NICOLA Sturgeon hailed a “significant milestone” in the fight against coronavirus as she announced more than half of Scotland’s population is now fully vaccinated.

The First Minister also revealed Scotland’s health boards will receive extra funding of almost £380 million to help them cope with the impact of Covid-19 and urged people to make use of walk-in vaccination centres that will be open across the mainland from Monday.

Sturgeon said the success of the vaccination programme is the reason the huge increase in coronavirus cases has not led to lockdown being imposed again. She said: “We are continuing to deal with a surge in new cases; it is heavily driven by the dominance of the Delta variant.

“Vaccination is the reason this surge in cases hasn’t led to the re-imposition of a strict lockdown. I think it would have done that at any earlier stage in this pandemic but now – and this is the positive thing about vaccination - the vaccines are doing much of the work that lockdown measures previously had to do.”

Sturgeon said yesterday that Scotland had recorded four deaths of coronavirus patients and 3823 new cases. She told a Scottish Government coronavirus briefing the death toll under this daily measure – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – now stands at 7726.

The daily test positivity rate was 10.8%, up from 10.5% the previous day. A total of 285 people were in hospital on Thursday with recently confirmed Covid-19, up 10, with 19 patients in intensive care, up three.

So far, 3,831,770 people have received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccination and 2,737,347 a second.

Sturgeon said: “Today’s vaccine numbers actually take us across quite a significant milestone. More than 60% of those eligible for the vaccine have now had both doses, but as of today, more than 50% of the entire population is now fully vaccinated. That is an important milestone and one that will be increasing our levels of protection against this virus.”

On the additional money for health boards, Sturgeon said: “Further funding for Covid matters is being made available today to help boards across the country – almost £380m is being allocated to help with additional costs this year. That includes the cost of the vaccination programme, the Test and Protect system and PPE. This is on top of the £1.7 billion for Covid allocated last year to health boards and to health and social care partnerships.”

The First Minister urged any unvaccinated Scots and those who have waited at least eight weeks for a second dose to get a vaccination after the announcement walk-in centres will be open across the country from Monday. All mainland health boards will be running vaccination drop-in centres for over-18s starting next week, with no appointment necessary.

Sturgeon said: “If you haven’t had a first dose or if you are now due for a second dose, from Monday, you’ll be able to visit a drop-in centre in order to get one. And let me stress, you can do this even if you’ve had a letter giving you an appointment, or if you’ve missed an appointment.

“If you’d rather turn up next week to drop in, you can do that even if you have an appointment scheduled for maybe a week or two from now. Information about all of the drop-in centres in your own health board area will be available online so I would encourage you to check this out over the weekend.”