SCOTLAND has been left “high and dry” by Boris Johnson after he announced almost all of England’s remaining Covid restrictions will be scrapped.

Coronavirus laws south of the Border, including the legal requirement for people who test positive to isolate, are set to end on Thursday before free universal testing is scrapped in April.

Nicola Sturgeon is set to announce her government’s new strategic framework for managing and recovering from the pandemic in Holyrood on Tuesday. However, the Prime Minister’s announcement has posed critical questions about the Scottish Government’s ability to continue its more comprehensive Covid restrictions.

The Prime Minister signalled in the Commons on Monday that after England scraps free Covid tests in April, Holyrood will have to cough up to continue its scheme. He told Ian Blackford: “Of course, if people want to continue beyond then ... then [the Scottish Government] has access to the £41 billion record settlement under Barnett and … to hundreds of millions from the health care levy which he voted against.”

Reflecting on the announcement on Tuesday morning, Blackford said the UK Government was abandoning its responsibility to devolved nations, the NHS and clinically vulnerable people.

He said testing was a “critical element” of a successful Covid strategy, explaining: “We need to know where the virus is, how it's spreading. We need to make sure that people can protect themselves.”

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The SNP Westminster leader was concerned by a lack of clarity over the long-term provision of testing for NHS workers. He added: “For example, there's no certainty as to whether or not healthcare workers will be able to get a test, how that will be funded. They will not know when they're going into hospitals, whether or not they’re carrying the virus. They won’t know if they are a threat to their colleagues, if they’re a threat to the public.

“When the Prime Minister was asked about this yesterday he talked about the NHS funding this. So the responsibility of this has been passed on from the Government. Government needs to take its responsibility of keeping people safe. That means that the Government should be providing testing for those that need it when they need it.”

While Blackford said he couldn’t “second guess” what Sturgeon would announce at Holyrood, he said the Prime Minister’s announcement had sparked “real concern” among devolved leaders – and destroyed any notions of a four-nations approach.

“The point about this is that Boris Johnson and the UK Government has done this without consultation,” the SNP MP told Sky News. “He’s announced that he's doing this and effectively he's left the devolved nations high and dry.”

He added: “The whole point about what was done yesterday is this wasn't done on the basis of scientific advice. We know where the World Health Organisation stands on this, we know where the individual Sage members stand. This is a Prime Minister [who] has done this to save his own skin, it’s to appeal to his own backbenchers and has nothing to do with best practices or public health.”

Under the plans announced in England on Monday, routine contact tracing will cease on Thursday, as will the £500 self-isolation payments and the legal obligation for individuals to tell their employers about their requirement to isolate.

On March 24, changes to statutory sick pay and employment support allowance designed to help people through the pandemic will come to an end.

Free universal testing will then be massively scaled back from April 1. The remaining symptomatic testing will be focused on the most vulnerable, with the UK Health Security Agency set to determine the details.

Public health experts – such as the Scottish Government's interim chief social policy adviser, Professor Linda Bauld – have warned that scrapping mass testing will make it extremely difficult to track new outbreaks and variants.

But Johnson, speaking on Monday night at a Downing Street press conference, remained confident that new variants could be effectively combatted.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson 'undermining' the Scottish Government with 'authority' jibe

Despite the backlash from the scientific community, the PM insisted he did not want people to think “there’s some division between the gung ho politicians and the cautious, anxious scientists”.

“We have a very clear view of this,” he said. “This has not gone away. We’re able to make these changes now because of the vaccines and the high level of immunity and all the other considerations about Omicron that you’ve seen.

“But we have to face the fact that there could be, likely will be, another variant that will cause us trouble.

“But I believe that thanks to a lot of the stuff that we’ve done, particularly investment in vaccines and vaccine technology and therapeutics, we’ll be in a far better position to tackle that new variant when it comes.”

Groups representing vulnerable individuals sounded the alarm over the end to isolation laws, with the Scope charity saying it would usher in a life “living with fear”.

Labour leader Keir Starmer said it was “not a plan to live well” with Covid and will leave the nation “vulnerable”.