(Bloomberg) --
As many as 50,000 people in Scotland could currently be infected with the coronavirus, though many of those won't know it or suffer more than mild symptoms, the country's top doctor said.
The true number of cases could easily be “between 40,000 and 50,000” at the moment due to limited testing capacity, Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood said at a briefing in Edinburgh on Thursday.
The official number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 894 from 719 a day earlier, with a further two deaths, taking the total number of fatalities to 25, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
The unofficial estimate for the spread of the disease came as Sturgeon announced plans to give Scottish police officers additional powers to enforce social distancing. Those powers could come into force as soon as today with punishments for breaches ranging from fines to as much as a jail sentence in extreme cases, Sturgeon said.
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