NICOLA Sturgeon accused Anas Sarwar of “oversimplifying things to the point it is dangerous” after he hit out at the Scottish Government’s vaccine passport scheme.

Sarwar claimed that the SNP had only pushed forward the scheme as they had been “determined to be seen to be doing something”.

Accusing the Scottish government of “pursuing the incorrect priority”, he called for a renewed focus on testing.

Sarwar also said that there was a spread of the virus in schools, which he said was “directly linked” to a lack of ventilation in classrooms.

“Asking schools to open the windows is not in itself a way of reducing transmission,” he said, asking what support would be given to help increase ventilation.

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He finished his questions for the First Minister by talking about vaccines.

The Scottish Labour leader said: “We know that the effectiveness of the vaccine reduces after six months of the second dose. There are over 800,000 people who are past the six months and have not yet received their booster.

“What urgent action are we taking to make sure all of those people have adequate levels of protection as we head into the winter months?”

In her answer, Sturgeon accused the Labour leader of oversimplifying issues “to the point it is dangerous”, saying he seemed to ignore the fact that a Government could focus on more than one thing at a time.

She also said that Sarwar had been “fundamentally wrong” on the issue of vaccine passports.

The SNP leader said that driving up vaccination rates had been a “central, primary objective” of the vaccine passport scheme, and that it had been a success in that area.

Sarwar shouted that it “had not worked”, but the First Minister argued that it had, saying Scotland is “now the most vaccinated part of the entire UK”.

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As well as leading slightly in terms of first and second shots, UK Government data shows that more than 30% of Scots have received a booster jag, above the 27.8% in Wales, 26.5% in England, and 18.7% in Northern Ireland.

Sturgeon claimed that if negative tests had been included in the scheme at an earlier date - as they now have been - the vaccine passports’ effect on uptake would not have been visible.

“We would have undermined the central, primary objective of the scheme”, she said.

Scotland’s roll-out of third or “booster” jags was announced on September 14 and officially began the following week.

Since then, almost 1.5 million people have been given a third dose of the vaccine, with Public Health Scotland data showing that around 30,000 people are receiving a third dose every day.

Addressing ventilation in schools, Sturgeon said “Anas Sarwar might have a point” if it was true that they were only suggesting teachers open the windows, but said there was a much wider focus on ways in which transmission could be reduced.

She said: “We’re doing all of these things, we will continue to do all of these things, and I suspect the one thing that will stay consistent is that the opposition will continue to oppose all these things that we’re doing to stem transmission.”