Nicola Sturgeon said people need to enter a “social bargain” to further drive down coronavirus for Scotland to move further out of lockdown.

The First Minister said if anyone has symptoms or is traced because they have been in contact with someone who has tested positive they need to isolate and get tested.

Ms Sturgeon said: “If all of us agrees to do that when necessary i means all of us will emerge from lockdown and start to lead less restricted lives.”

The First Minister urged people if they have symptoms not to wait, even a couple of hours, instead to isolate and book a test immediately.

She said it would enable the country to emerge form lockdown not only more quickly but safely.

She said that numbers were falling and it was allowing the government to consider further easing next week but it depended on a collective effort to prevent a resurgence.

Ms Sturgeon said that it is now estimated there are around 4,500 in Scotland who have coronavirus which is down from more than 11,000 two weeks ago.

However she stressed it was “still large enough to make the virus take off again if the R number was to go above one". 

The R number the number of people that one person re-infects she said is estimated to have fallen from between 0.7 and 0.9 down to between 0.6 and 0.8.

Ms Sturgeon said: “These latest estimates reflect the encouraging data that we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks and there is no doubt in looking at all of this data that we are making very real progress in combating and suppressing the virus.”

She added: “A week today we will have further review of the lockdown restrictions.

“I am currently very hopeful that at that point we will be able to lift some further restrictions, we may not be able to do everything in phase two but I hope that we can do certainly at least some of that.”

The latest statistics showed there were 17 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive in the last 24 hours.

There were 909 people in hospital down 78 form the day before and here were 21 people in intensive care an increase of three.

In Greater Glasgow health board area there were 3995 and 272 in hospital. The number in intensive care was fewer than five.

The First Minister also announced the construction industry will be able to move into the next stage of reopening.

Workers will now gradually be able to return to construction sites, with social distancing measures in place.

However, Ms Sturgeon said there is still “a long way to go” until construction is back to normal.

An extension of the Scottish Government’s help-to-buy scheme was also announced.

The initiative, which provides up to 15% of the price of buying a new-build house, was due to end in March next year but has now been extended to March 2022.

And financial support, worth £11m, for students, who would normally work in part-time jobs to supplement their income, will be made available through colleges and universities.