Nicola Sturgeon has warned that retailers may have to suspend their click and collect services under tougher lockdown restrictions.
With 'stay at home' advice being put into law by the Scottish Government, the FM said at her daily coronavirus briefing yesterday that NHS was managing at the moment, but was “under severe and increasing pressure."
Unlike the first lockdown imposed in March last year, manufacturing and construction businesses have so far been allowed to continue to operate.
Click and collect services could be halted in a bid to reduce people travelling outdoors.
Sturgeon pointed to the example of the Republic of Ireland, which recently introduced a similar ban.
She said: "That shouldn't be taken as an indication we are definitely going to do, but it's the kind of thing we are going to look at if we have a concern that we are not sufficiently reducing the number of people that are out and about and interacting.
"We always strike a balance between keeping people at home and allowing certain things to continue.
"In the last lockdown, non-essential manufacturing and construction did not operate for a period. Both have done an awful lot to make their operations safer.
"But we have to keep all of that under review. At the end of the day, what matters here is that we reduce interactions sufficiently to stop this virus spreading."
