The Scottish government was slot xo warned that a "third wave" of the Covid pandemic is now taking a grip in Scotland.
Many areas of Scotland will remain in level two to tackle the rising numbers of cases in the central belt.
However, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says there is evidence that the link between cases and serious illness and death "appears to be weakening".
When will we know if this link has been broken?
How many people have now been vaccinated in Scotland?
Public health officials are increasingly confident that the vaccination programme is relieving the pressure on NHS Scotland.
They believe that fully vaccinated adults are less likely to need hospital treatment for Covid - or die. And those who do end up in hospital, on the whole, need shorter periods of treatment than earlier in the pandemic.
Almost 70% of the adult population of Scotland have now received at least a first dose of a Covid vaccine, with more than two million people fully vaccinated.
Coverage is also good among the older age groups who are more vulnerable to becoming seriously ill or dying with Covid.
Hospital admissions are going up
Covid cases began to rise again in Scotland at the beginning of May, following a sustained decline since mid-January. The increases we're seeing at the moment are similar to September, at the start of the second wave.
Everyone would prefer case numbers to be going down - but it does provide the ultimate strength test for the vaccination programme.
Will the number of hospital admissions and deaths remain static? Or will they begin to rise steeply again, as we saw in the autumn?
The rolling seven-day average of new daily cases of Covid-19 was 551 on 2 June - a figure which has risen from 288 over the past 14 days.
During that period, the average number of Covid patients in hospital has gone up from 68 to 99, a rise of about 46%.