He asked people to follow public health advice over ChristmasCredit: Alamy Stock Photo
He told Saturday with Katie Hannon: "There's plenty of opportunity to socialise and be together over the next couple of weeks and we're really asking people to consider the risks.
"We're in really quite a delicate and fragile position in terms of the level of circulating virus, the numbers of people in hospital and intensive care."
"We're asking people to do two things: think about how many contacts they really need to have in order to have a meaningful Christmas and limit that to the lowest possible number, particularly now.