The health secretary said it may still not have had a different approach to dealing with the coronavirus crisis if it had the preparedness it now has.

There has been much criticism that 'test-trace-and-isolate' had to be abandoned in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis because the country did not have the infastructure to test, or the bodies to trace as the coronavirus took hold.

In an open session on the Scottish Parliament testing inquiry - before it went private - Jeane Freeman said: "Capacity undoubtedly has an impact, but the capacity grew relatively quickly.

"The clinical advice that we were receiving was that, at the point at which community transmission was so significant that contact tracing—test and trace—was no longer viable, we had to shift from the containment phase to the delay phase. At that point, what we were using testing for, or who we were pushing it towards, changed."

Scotland's 'missed' daily tests has nearly doubled since Nicola Sturgeon said the ability to screen had been ramped up in preparation for the national 'test and protect' scheme.

The Herald revealed  that there were at least 70,906 'missed' tests in the two weeks before the First Minister outlined her test, trace and isolate strategy last week - at a rate of at least 5,064 a day.

READ MORE: Coronavirus crisis -  Scotland's 'missed' daily tests double after 'test and protect' capacity boost

But since it was announced on Tuesday that testing capacity had increased to 15,000 a day, official figures show that the nation has been testing at an average rate of 5223-a-day.

Ms Freeman said: "Even if we had had the capacity for 15,000 tests at the outset, I am not certain that we would have taken a significantly different approach, given everything else that was known and the advice that we were receiving."

She said they were now aiming for a 24-hour turnaround in coronavirus test results "because speed is of the essence".

And she said guidance from the chief medical officer required that turnaround times for tests be 48 hours at the most.

The Scottish Government had come under fire earlier this month after public health professor Linda Bauld warned there was a “big problem” with the test, trace, isolate strategy – with the turnaround for test results averaging 30 hours. She said other countries were doing it in four hours.

She also insisted that the priority was to direct the ability to test to save lives and protect the vulnerable, ensuring that critical staff "can return to work as soon as possible if it is safe for them to do so" and monitoring and reporting on the spread and prevalence of the virus.

"Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on those three priority areas, including testing care home staff and residents with or without Covid-19, as well as children aged five and over, while expanding to do more testing of people in the community so that we can identify cases of Covid-19 and, through test and protect, stop further transmission of the virus."

The Scottish Government also revealed it has now reached a target of recruiting 2000 contact tracers, who will get in touch with confirmed cases and their close contacts.

A spokesman said 2002 were available to health boards – with 817 in place now and the remaining 1185 to “be deployed as required”.