Nicola Sturgeon's senior advisor on the coronavirus pandemic has admitted the levels system of lockdown in Scotland wasn't effective enough to stop the rise in cases.
Professor Devi Sridhar said that the method of moving the nation out of full lockdown will be gradual and data-driven in a bid to prevent a third wave of the virus.
The latest figures show that no new deaths were recorded in Scotland in the last 24-hour period. The death poll since the start of the pandemic in March last year stands at 7,421.
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Show, Prof Sridhar also said if the R (reproduction) number can stay below one then more of the economy will be allowed to open heading into the summer months.
The First Minister said Scotland would head back into a levels system similar to the one the country had last year once the full national lockdown is lifted.
Pro Sridhar said: “Last time the level system wasn’t strong enough- wasn’t strict enough - to really get the numbers down so it wasn’t as effective as we needed it to be so the idea is of course that we need to keep the R number under 1.
"The epidemic is either increasing or it’s decreasing so if we can keep R under 1, we can keep it decreasing into the summer months and that means we can open up much more.
“The basic principle is the less prevalence we have of the virus - where we were last summer - the more freedom we have expect this time we can vaccinate a large percentage of the population and therefore have a more sustainable exit than we did last summer.”
Prof Sridhar said people needed to be patient but there was "light ahead" after months of harsh lockdown restrictions in Scotland.
She added: "We just need to be patient, hold our nerve.
"The way the Scottish Government has been approaching this has been to underpromise and overdeliver, so if we can accelerate, amazing.
"It would be better - nobody wants to be in lockdown, everybody wants to have more mixing, we want to interact, we want to go back to normal life.
"This is reliant on the vaccine as well as the public compliance with pretty harsh restrictions for months now.
"So there is light ahead and it’s only going to get better as we head into the summer months with the aim to being vaccinating all adults by mid-July, so I think those of us living in Scotland are in quite a privileged position compared to what’s happening in a lot of parts of the world right now."
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