SCOTLAND'S national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch has said he does not think there will be another lockdown in Scotland this Christmas.

Last year, a strict travel ban and limit on household mixing was put in place just a week before Christmas, with the country moving into level four restrictions on Boxing Day.

Professor Leitch said he does not expect the festive season to be similar to last year and was hopeful things will be different to the 2020 Christmas lockdown.

Although he accepted that he “honestly” doesn’t know what the Covid situation will be by the end of the year he said: “I don’t think we’ll be in lockdown. I don’t think we’ll go back so far that it’ll feel like it did way back at the beginning in wave one and even in wave two.

“I’m hopeful that together, the NHS and the people of Scotland, can get us to what will be a Christmas where we can see family and we can go about our business, go for dinner, go for nights out, but inside that, check in, get your vaccine, get tested to make all of that safer.”

Nicola Sturgeon said on Tuesday that it is "not necessary" to tighten Covid restrictions, but warned that hospitals are seeing an increase in admissions among older people.

Updating the Scottish Parliament for the first time since the end of the October recess, the First Minister said Scotland was seeing a "very slight increase in cases".

This had climbed from an average of just under 2,500 per day three weeks ago to just over 2,500 per day now.

Although the virus remains too “difficult” to predict, Mr Leitch did say the vaccine roll-out is one of the reasons this Christmas will hopefully be less restrictive.

The Herald:

He told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland: “There are some early signs of reduction in England numbers, now they’re way higher than us so they’re starting from a higher base just now.

“It may be that we’re beginning to see the effect of bigger numbers of vaccinations and we might get some benefit from that over the next little while.”

Mr Leitch stressed the importance of people following the restrictions that do remain in place.

He said: “You’d have to introduce really draconian restrictions to get it down, so we need it down more slowly, with vaccines, testing, and following the hygiene rules.

“It’s what people are doing but the vaccine is stubborn. There’s no sensible public health advisor in the world who wouldn’t say to politicians we need to have a reverse gear, we have to be able to go backwards as well as forwards.

“If you think about where we’ve been to where we are, life is pretty much back to normal in a lot of settings, which is why we need people to not drop their guard.”