Professor Linda Bauld, of Edinburgh University, said there was no need for the "old days of restrictions and panic" and that vaccines were still working.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released on Friday estimated that about one person in 40 in Scotland had the virus.

Last week, the figure was around one in every 50 people with adults in their 30s and 40s most affected by the rise.

Meanwhile, it is estimated that one in 70 people has the virus in England, compared to one in 65 in Northern Ireland and one in 75 in Wales.

Prof Bauld, a public health expert from the University of Edinburgh, told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme the message was "be alert but certainly don't panic".

"There is absolutely no evidence that our vaccines have stopped working. We know that they confer good protection and [with] some parts of our immune response that's a longer-term level of protection," she said.

"So we're not going back to the old days of restrictions and panic with this variant we have now. But we do need to be aware that we might be heading into another few weeks where it's more common for people to become infected with this virus."

Covid infections rise in Scotland but 'no panic and no restrictions' required