![Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called on businesses to take the new measures as seriously as they did during the first lockdown in 2020. "The situation now is at least as serious as it was then [in March]," she said](https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/FN-AM171_Sturge_M_20210104093830.jpg)
Scotland will be back in a strict lockdown from midnight, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced to the Scottish Parliament, saying that the nation was now in a race "between the vaccine and the virus".
The new restrictions come as Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces intensified calls to put England back into a nationwide lockdown as the number of cases surge and the new fast-spreading variant of Covid-19 circulates through the country.
