Nicola Sturgeon says young people won't be treated as "guinea pigs" amid fears about the impact of long Covid.
The First Minister was speaking during Thursday's coronavirus update in which she pointed to the fact the virus can "significantly" impact younger people.
She said: "I want to set out simply why we can't just throw all caution to the wind. Firstly, this virus is still dangerous, as we see every day. It is still taking lives, though mercifully thanks to the vaccines, it is doing so in far fewer numbers than we saw in earlier stages.
"Secondly, even though the majority of cases are now in younger people, who are much less likely to become acutely ill, the health impacts can still be significant. Many young people are suffering from long Covid, which of course experts still do not full understand.
"So, it would be wrong and irresponsible, because our young people are not guinea pigs, to have no concern at all for young people infected with this virus."
An NHS chief this morning expressed concern about the number of unvaccinated young people developing long Covid, and the potential long-term health impact it could have on them.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers in England, says there is a "real nervousness" about the number of those who have mild symptoms at first but go on to develop more severe long Covid.
He told BBC Breakfast he had spoken to the chief executive of an NHS trust about the issue.
He said: "The bit that was really striking for me yesterday... was they were saying they were really getting quite worried about the number of unvaccinated young people who were getting mild Covid symptoms because they caught Covid, but then quite quickly afterwards were developing much more severe long Covid-type symptoms.
"And we just don't know exactly how this is going to pan out so we just need to be careful about recognising the risks that we're running here. It's not just about hospitalisations, it's actually potentially people having really quite serious long-term conditions once they have caught Covid.
"What they were saying was it wasn't just a few of these young people who had mild Covid symptoms and then really quite severe long Covid symptoms, it was actually quite a few.
"So there's a real nervousness here about we still don't fully understand what the long-term health consequences are if you catch Covid. So we all need to be careful and aware of the risks here."
