AN urgent investigation has been launched into why Inverclyde has become the 'coronavirus capital' of Scotland.

The expert probe — ordered by local authority leader Stephen McCabe — is seen as vital in getting to the root of how the district has by far the highest COVID-19 death rate in country.

During the crisis, official statistics have shown that people in the district are dying of the disease at nearly three times the national average.

Links have already been made between coronavirus deaths and poverty, poor health and elderly people being most at risk.

But it is thought that other factors have played a part contributing to the district's devastating death toll which, as of last Wednesday, stood at 106 lives lost to the virus from a population of just 78,000.

Councillor McCabe commissioned the report at a meeting of the policy and resources executive sub-committee and it is due to be delivered next month.

He said: "It is vital we try to establish why the impact on Inverclyde of COVID-19 has been so great and why we appear to have been hit earlier than most other areas of Scotland.

"The underlying health and age profile of our population will undoubtedly have been factors but these alone don't appear to explain why Inverclyde has been such an outlier in the Scottish statistics.

"Our community is rightly looking for answers.

"We need to know if the public health response to the early cases of the virus in Inverclyde was the right one and if the strategy for managing the virus both at a national and local level has been appropriate.

"If mistakes have been made we need to learn from them so that residents in Inverclyde and other parts of Scotland are not as vulnerable to any future waves of this deadly virus."

Data released earlier this year from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) revealed that central Greenock is now officially the most deprived area in Scotland and Inverclyde has a higher than average pensioner population.

It has also been suggested that a lack of lockdown discipline in the early stages of the public health response to the virus may also have contributed to terrible effect it has had on Inverclyde.

In one incident, riot police swooped on a disturbance at Cheers bar on West Stewart Street in March after it remained open in defiance of government guidelines for all pubs and restaurants to close.

The council said afterwards that it was 'appalling that someone would ignore the national guidance and put lives at risk'.

Councillor McCabe said: "Looking at the Inverclyde curve, it would suggest it peaked earlier than elsewhere in Scotland, so it could be that we had outbreaks earlier than other parts of the country."

The coronavirus investigation findings are expected to go before the next meeting of the policy and resources executive sub-committee on June 2, although this is yet to be confirmed.

Members agreed that a report be submitted 'providing an analysis of the deaths registered in Inverclyde, this analysis to include, if possible, data such as age, underlying health conditions and SIMD factors'.

The council and Inverclyde Health & Social Care Partnership have been working with Public Health Scotland, National Records of Scotland and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde to produce it.