UNVACCINATED Fifers are much more "severely ill" if they catch coronavirus than people who are jabbed, a top Fife doctor has warned.

Dr Chris McKenna, NHS Fife medical director who also takes on shifts on the hospital frontline, explained that those who were unvaccinated had needed much higher levels of care.

As COVID cases have shot up in recent weeks, NHS Fife has been treating more people for the virus.

Around a third of patients who have presented as infected have been unvaccinated compared to two-thirds that have had the vaccine. However, those who've been jabbed are much less severely ill.

"We are now seeing a game of two halves," said Dr McKenna.

"People are attending who have been vaccinated as well as those people who haven't been vaccinated.

"We are seeing that illness is significantly more serious in those patients that have not been vaccinated.

"Many of those people require higher levels of care and we're having to maintain two intensive care units at a time."