NICOLA Sturgeon has confirmed Scotland’s first steps out of lockdown will go ahead as planned.

As of Friday, the nationwide “stay at home” order will be replaced with “stay local” rules, with Scots still limited to travelling within their local authority area.

Addressing the nation from her coronavirus briefing, the First Minister confirmed another 12 people have died after testing positive in the previous 28 days, bringing the total under that measurement to 7596.

A further 411 cases were also recorded in the past 24 hours, with a positivity rate of 2.8%.

Some 250 people are in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19, a decrease of nine in 24 hours.

Of those, 23 are in intensive care, an increase of one.

Of the new cases, 109 are in Lothian, 94 in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and 76 in Lanarkshire. The other cases are spread across seven other health board areas.

The First Minister said that Scotland's vaccine rollout has been "better than we could have dared hope for”.

Almost 2.5 million people have received their first dose, while almost 340,000 people have been given a second dose.

Sturgeon said: "These figures confirm the very good progress in the last three months.”

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But she warned against complacency, urging people to be "hyper-vigilant".

"There are still no grounds for complacency," the FM said. "In fact, it is really important right now that while the vaccination programme continues to be rolled out, that all of us remain hyper-vigilant in how we're going about our daily lives."

The number of new cases is now "plateauing", Sturgeon explained, after having consistently dropped throughout January and February.

She confirmed that on Friday “stay local” rules will be introduced and are expected to be in place for at least three weeks.

On Monday, further restrictions will be eased, including the return of some students to on-campus learning.

Contact sports will resume for 12-17 year-olds and there will be a limited re-opening of some retail outlets. Click and collect services will resume, but only with appointments. Car showrooms, homeware stores and garden centres will also re-open, as will hairdressers and barbers.

The First Minister added: "We don't want big crowds at these stores, so although they open from Monday, think about whether you really need to visit on Monday or if you're able to wait until later in the week."