Scotland’s Deputy First Minister John Swinney said that some of the Omicron variant cases identified in Scotland have no travel history, which suggests there is a degree of community transmission.
Six cases have been identified in Scotland after three cases were found in England.
He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “We obviously have some travel history on some of the cases, I don’t have all of that detail available to me at this stage, but on some of the cases we are aware that there is no travel history involved on some of the cases.
“So what that tells us is that there must be a degree of community transmission of this particular strain of the virus in the absence of direct travel connection for some of the cases in the southern African area.
“So that obviously opens up further challenges for us in terms of interrupting the spread of this particular strain of the virus and that will be the focus of the contact tracing operation that is under way already.”
Omicron Variant was detected in South Africa last week seeing 10 countries added to the UK's travel red list.
From Tuesday mandatory masks will return to shops and public transport in England and everyone coming into the UK will have to take a PCR test.
There are fears Omicron spreads more rapidly than Delta Covid and could evade the vaccines.
