ANAS Sarwar has called for the gap between first and second vaccinations to be halved to four weeks to deal with the “out of control” spread of coronavirus.

The Scottish Labour leader wants Holyrood to be recalled as he warned that the exit from the pandemic “rests on a knife edge”.

Accusing the Scottish Government of being too slow on measures such as walk-in vaccination centres and contact tracing, Sarwar said the speed of the vaccination rollout must now be increased amid record levels of new Covid-19 cases.

In his call to cut the time between vaccinations, Sarwar pointed to guidance from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which suggests that vaccines can be effective when the two doses are administered just four weeks apart.

“We need a plan now for dealing with this – and the clear route out of this is speeding up the vaccination effort,” he said.

“By cutting the waiting time between the doses, we can get people protected faster and ensure our response to the pandemic is keeping pace with the crisis.”

In response, a spokesperson for Health Secretary Humza Yousaf argued that an eight-week gap was “optimal” according to advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and “reducing that below eight weeks would compromise the effectiveness of the vaccine and how long that effect lasts”.

He added: “We are progressing the final stages of our successful vaccine rollout as quickly as we can. This is limited by supply, we can only give Pfizer to younger age groups, in addition, constraints on supply affect the pool of those who had their first dose eight weeks previously.”

Last week saw the most Covid cases than at any point during the pandemic, with a peak of 4484 new infections recorded.