The Queen's courtiers are nervous about Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie’s first Balmoral trip at Christmas, it has been reported.
Officials are desperate to make sure Her Majesty, 95, is not put at risk of catching Covid and they are worrying about a proposed visit by the Prime Minister and his wife, it is claimed.
The Queen has had both doses of the vaccine but courtiers are still being careful that she doesn't catch the virus.
While the symptoms may only be mild they are desperate not to take any risks and her age makes her vulnerable to the disease.
Boris and Carrie are expected to be asked to take Covid tests and avoid meeting other people in the days before the trip.
“The visit is still due to go ahead but, frankly, we'd rather it wasn’t,” a royal source told the Daily Mail.
The Queen has reportedly not attended church since she arrived at Balmoral in a precaution over Covid and over fears crowds could gather.
Last year, the Queen and late husband the Duke of Edinburgh spent six weeks on the 50,000-acre Royal Deeside estate.
But the pair - who had been isolating together for months at Windsor - had to form a close knit bubble with staff and couldn't entertain as they usually would do.
The Queen and Philip - who died in April aged 99 - had often called Balmoral their "happy place" and had spent each summer there of their 73-year marriage.
This comes as Scotland is experiencing a huge rise in Covid cases.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the government was not currently considering a circuit-breaker lockdown despite a record number of new Covid infections and a steep rise in patients in hospital with the virus.
The First Minister told a coronavirus briefing that 6,835 new cases had been reported in the past 24 hours.
It's the second time in a week that a record daily figure has been reported with the numbers starting to worry experts.
The number of coronavirus patients in Scotland also continues to rise, with 479 people in hospital on Thursday with recently confirmed Covid.
This is up 53 on the previous day and an increase from 312 one week ago.
Ms Sturgeon cautioned that the rise in cases was partly due to a record number of tests being taken on Thursday.
And she said that "none of us want to go backwards to even limited restrictions".
"Some of the speculation you might be reading in the media is not accurate," she said.
"We are not currently considering a circuit breaker lockdown."
She said the Scottish Government was closing monitoring any rise in serious illnesses and "people being hospitalised".
