CORONAVIRUS was introduced to Scotland from Europe - not China - as far back as February, lab results suggest.

Scientists sequencing virus samples from the country's first confirmed Covid-19 cases say it was brought in several times, "mainly" from nations including Italy, Austria and Spain.

Direct links to China or other Asian states were not found.

The first confirmed case in Scotland was March 1.

Researchers believe it was introduced at least 113 times during the first four weeks of the outbreak.

And these "travel-related introductions" predate both UK travel restrictions and border closures elsewhere in Europe.

A "dramatic shift" from travel-associated to sustained community transmission is said to have happened from March 11 - ten days after the first detected case.

Professor Emma Thomson, of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said: “Our study confirms SARS-CoV-2 entered the Scottish population through at least 113 separate travel-related introductions, leading to multiple clusters of sustained community transmission. 

"We identified viral lineages with no link to travel as early as three days after the first detection of infection, indicating earlier introduction to Scotland and community spread before the first detected case.

“The emergence of continental Europe as the epicentre of the global Covid pandemic was a clear driver of the Scottish outbreak, with the majority of the lineages detected in this study related to European sequences.

"Cases with links to China and other countries in South-East Asia were comparatively not detected.”

Thomson went on: “The speed at which the virus took hold in Scotland and the UK as a whole following multiple introductions, mainly from other European countries, was extremely rapid.

"It is possible an earlier lockdown from countries with a high burden of cases, such as Italy, and other measures such as quarantine of travellers from high-risk areas, might have prevented escalation of the outbreak and multiple clusters of ongoing community transmission.

“Tracking the new coronavirus using sequencing and phylo-epidemiological analysis may help to inform our current response and the effect of public health interventions in real-time and is a tool that can be used to understand future infectious disease outbreaks of this nature.”

Thomson's team worked with  NHS partners at the West of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on the research.

She said: “As the number of cases subside in Scotland, our sequence data can provide a baseline for real-time sequencing of ongoing infections, which can act as a measure for policymakers of the success of current measures and contribute to the easing, or tightening, of public health measures.”