Dr Catherine Calderwood admitted that the lockdown could contribute to a spike in pregnancies in nine months time, but said people should ask if “now is the right time” for a pregnancy.

At the Scottish Government’s daily briefing on the spread of the coronavirus, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was asked about advice for people thinking of starting a family, or those “with time on their hands at home”.

Coronavirus: Pregnant women must minimise social contact, says chief medical off...

Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland's Chief Medical Officer, has urged people to think twice about becoming pregnant during the coronavirus outbreak.

In a brief moment of levity, she handed the question to Dr Calderwood, a trained obstetrician. “This has occured to me. We do need to be advising people about having time on their hands – the labour ward is always very busy nine months after Valentine’s Day,” she laughed.

“But seriously, almost all maternity services are emergency services, so we can’t pause them like elective surgery. We are encouraging women who are currently pregnant to come forward to have their scans and antenatal care, and colleagues have changed what they’re doing to offer virtual clinics so women don’t have to travel.”

She added: “It has also been suggested to me that we talk to people about contraception, and really thinking about whether... 50 per cent of pregnancies are unplanned... so whether perhaps to think is this really the time to have an unplanned pregnancy?”

Dr Calderwood said that maternity services and hospital provision will carry on running as normal. “We have planned for all the babies that would have been born, to have the same care that would have happened outside this pandemic,” she said.

“People are making difficult choices, so I would encourage people to think about their own health, to ask am I in the best of health, is this the best time to start thinking about having a baby?”

Scots warned against unplanned pregnancies during virus outbreak