“Sometimes when you hear people talk about learning to live with Covid, what seems to be suggested is that one morning we’ll wake up and not have to worry about it any more, and not have to do anything to try to contain and control it,” she said.

“That’s not what I mean when I say ‘learning to live with it’. Instead, we will have to ask ourselves what adaptations to pre-pandemic life – face coverings, for example – might be required in the longer-term to enable us to live with it with far fewer protective measures.”

Ms Sturgeon also said the health service would need to be managed differently to cope with Covid in the long term, with more patients treated at home instead of in hospital.

Meanwhile, business leaders said her “gamble” with tougher Covid restrictions must end after they failed to make “any meaningful difference” to case numbers in Scotland.

Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce (AGCC) published a survey which said more than 40 per cent of firms in north-east Scotland will need to cut jobs if the restrictions are extended or strengthened. Almost one third of firms (31 per cent) said they were at moderate or high risk of collapse if the restrictions continued.

Three in four businesses said they did not think Ms Sturgeon was correctly balancing health and economic harms when drafting policy, while almost two-thirds thought the restrictions were not proportionate to the risk posed by omicron.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, did not call for the restrictions to be scrapped immediately but said Ms Sturgeon needed to provide “some light at the end of the tunnel” by publishing a timetable for a new approach.

Prof Jason Leitch, Scotland’s national clinical director, said the country’s tougher measures were working and that keeping them in place was “the right thing to do”.