NICOLA Sturgeon has denied her escalating public war with Alex Salmond is distracting her from the coronavirus crisis.

The First Minister insisted she was “laser-focused on dealing with this pandemic”.

She told the daily briefing that if other people wanted to focus on other things that was their decision, but for her “nothing is more important” than dealing with Covid at present.

It came just a day after Ms Sturgeon and her predecessor traded blows in the media over the Holyrood inquiry into the Salmond affair.

MSPs are investigating the Scottish Government’s bungled probe into sexual misconduct claims made against Mr Salmond in 2018.

The former first minister had the exercise set aside in a judicial review by showing it had been “tainted by apparent bias”, a grave procedural flaw that left taxpayers with a £512,000 bill for his costs.

Ms Sturgeon told Holyrood last week she had “nothing to hide”, but has faced a drip-drip of leaks and hostile briefings from Mr Salmond’s camp.

One of her own MPs has called for her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, to be suspended, while an SNP MSP has demanded a judge led inquiry into the affair.

On Sky News on suunday, Ms Sturgeon said Mr Salmond appeared “angry” with her because she had refused to cover-up the misconduct claims.

She said: “I think the reason perhaps he is angry with me - and he clearly is angry with me - is that I didn’t cover it up, I didn’t collude with him to make these allegations go away.”

In response, Mr Salmond issued his first public statement on the matter since his separate criminal trial in March, at which he was acquitted of 13 counts of sexual misconduct.

He said: “I will comment in front of the parliamentary committee. This committee was established to inquire into the conduct of the first minister, her special advisers and civil servants after her government’s behaviour was found to be ‘unlawful’, ‘unfair’ and ‘tainted by apparent bias’, and at enormous cost to the public purse.”

One of his supporters said he was not angry with Ms Sturgeon, but "astonished at teh er-shifting sands of her story".

Asked at the daily briefing if the Salmond affair had become a distraction from her work on the pandemic, and whether she would like Mr Salmond and his proxies to cut her some slack, she said: “It hasn’t been a distraction. 

“I’m focused on dealing with the pandemic and whether you’re one of people who think I don’t get anything right, or one oof the people who think I get everything right, or the vast majority who probably think it’s somewhere in the middle, I think everybody would say that I’m pretty laser-focused on dealing with this pandemic.

“I’m not in control of the questions I get asked in television interviews. I will answer questions as fully as possible. I do try in these briefings not to get dragged into other areas,

“So it’s not a distraction. There is nothing more important that I have dealt with or will deal with over this period than continuing to try and navigate the best possible course for the country through this pandemic. 

“Other people will make their own decisions about the things they want to focus on, but that’s what I’m going to focus on, because I think it’s what the country expects of me and will continue to expect of me for as long as we’ve got this pandemic to deal with.”