NICOLA Sturgeon has said she will not be meeting her parents over the Christmas period as she urged Scots to take a cautious approach to the relaxed restrictions.

Her call came as public health experts warned of the consequences of the four-nation plan to change the guidance over the festive period,

Between December 23 and 27 up to three households will be able to form a bubble, and to travel between local authorities and the four nations.

More details of how that will work in practice are due to be set out today.

On Tuesday night, professor Andrew Hayward, a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) told the BBC’s Newsnight that he wouldn’t be gathering with family at Christmas.

Prof Hayward said: “Effectively what this will be doing is throwing fuel on the Covid fire. It is likely to lead to a third wave of infection, with hospitals being overrun, and more unnecessary deaths.”

Scottish Government adviser professor Devi Sridhar said: “It’s inevitable that when you have more people mixing indoors, you have travel restrictions being lifted meaning moves from high prevalence to low prevalence areas we are going to pay for Christmas holidays with probably a January national lockdown.”

Scottish Greens health spokesperson Alison Johnstone said the comments were concerning and urged the Scottish Government to publish the evidence used to justify the temporary rule change.

Johnstone said: “It is very worrying that advisers to both governments have such concerns about relaxing the restrictions over Christmas.

“The World Health Organisation advise that a virus is considered out of control when 5% of tests are positive. Yesterday, we were told that 8.6% of tests for Covid-19 were positive, so the last thing we need to be doing is sending out mixed signals.”

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She continued: “This is obviously a balancing act, but we need to see the evidence. In order to make this decision, the First Minister must have been appraised of the likely increase in infections. Parliament and the people of Scotland deserve to know how many extra infections the Scottish Government is comfortable with.”

Speaking at the Scottish Government’s daily coronavirus briefing, the First Minister said the new guidelines are the “outer limits” people are being asked “to work within”.

She stressed that her “default advice” remains: “If you can get through this Christmas staying in your own home within your own household, please do so.”

She said: “After all these months of sacrifice, I don’t want to put my parents … I don’t want to put them at risk for the sake of one day.

“If we wait just a few more weeks, or two or three more months, maybe they’ll be vaccinated and we can get together in a way that is safer.”

Sturgeon also suggested people think about celebrating Christmas differently this year, saying: “For example, and I know this is something I’m thinking about in my own personal circumstances, instead of meeting indoors for Christmas, go for a family walk together, exchange presents on the way, see each other outside.

She continuted: “All of this sounds difficult and strange but we are living in difficult and strange times.”

Earlier, First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford said the governments had little choice but to act.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Wednesday morning, the Welsh First Minister said: “If we had asked people simply to live with the current level of restrictions, there was a real risk that people simply would not be able to go along with that.”

There were 44 coronavirus deaths recorded in Scotland between Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing the total number of fatalities to 3,588.

Data released by the National Records of Scotland show 5,380 people have died with confirmed or suspected coronavirus.