NICOLA Sturgeon has suggested border controls between Scotland and the rest of the UK may be considered to "guard against infection rates rising in Scotland as a result" of them rising elsewhere.

Speaking at the Government's daily coronavirus briefing today, the First Minister said there were currently “no plans to introduce quarantine for people coming to Scotland from other parts of the UK”, but added that they would be required to give the idea consideration if infection rates south of the Border threatened Scotland’s progress in battling the virus.

She said: “If we did see an ongoing divergence between infection rates and levels in Scotland and other parts of the UK, from a public health perspective we would require to give consideration about how we mitigate that and guard against infection rates rising in Scotland as a result.”

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Sturgeon added: "We also know that quarantine measures, albeit perhaps on a more targeted basis in future, may become more important in Scotland rather than less as our infection rates fall, since then the relative impact of new cases from outside Scotland potentially becomes greater.

"And the prospect of cases coming in from elsewhere poses a risk - not just to health but also to our economy."

The First Minister’s comments come after Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University, said that in order to eliminate the coronavirus in Scotland without a closed English border, “we have to find the next best solution".

Sridhar said we would “have to obviously have good checks in place for imported cases” such as those that may come from England where “you still have a substantial number of cases”.

It is actually England becoming the outlier

“The latest estimates [of English cases] are 3000 to 4000 from the Office of National Statistics survey a few weeks back, and actually given the opening up and the behaviour since then it’s probably even higher,” she added.

Sridhar said Westminster is running a suppression strategy, aiming to balance the economy and death rate, whereas Scotland is aiming to eliminate the virus altogether, which would then allow the economy to open and flourish.

Asked if it is realistic to have an elimination strategy in one area of the UK and a suppression strategy in another, Sridhar said: “I think we’d like to see [elimination] throughout the UK, all nations, because Ireland and Northern Ireland are also working in a similar way towards elimination.

“It is actually England becoming the outlier and preparing to turn it around and go towards elimination.”

READ MORE: Eradicating the virus will require closing the Border

The Scottish Government introduced a requirement for people coming into Scotland from overseas to quarantine for two weeks on June 8.

Arrivals are required to fill out a form explaining where they will be isolating, with various fines in place for those found breaching the regulations.

Border Force officers carry out spot checks, with fines of up to £480 for giving false information or flouting the quarantine rules.

People believed to be repeatedly breaching the quarantine can be reported to the Procurator Fiscal for criminal prosecution, with fines of up to £5000, although Yousaf said this would be done “as a last resort”.