Vaccine passports spot-checks at Scottish football grounds 'an option' as government talks continue

Scottish football grounds could have a spot-checking system in place for vaccine passports, according to the country’s health minister.

Fans in attendance at Sunday's Edinburgh derby. Picture: SNS

Fans may have to prove they’ve received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine beginning next month when the rules come into force on events with over 10,000 people in attendance.

The Scottish Government is currently looking at the best ways of implementing the system as they acknowledge it wouldn’t be practical to check the passport for everybody in a 60,000-seater stadium like Celtic Park, for example.

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf says conversations are going as they seek to make football grounds as safe as possible.

He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: "There may well be proportionate measures that could be taken in large-scale events which would be different from smaller – for example, nightclubs – but we want as many people as possible and practical to be checked.

"I noticed in that clip that you played from Neil Doncaster, he did say a certification scheme could work, with potentially spot checks, so that is absolutely an option that we're happy to consider.

"But we want to make sure that if we did that we would want to really push the likes of football clubs and others to say how many, practically and pragmatically, to say: how can you check?

"What we do with the likes of SPFL football clubs is share the digital keys that are part of our QR code and say: 'Look, we already have the digital infrastructure most football clubs tend to do at the turnstile, can that be incorporated into your turnstile?' And that's the conversations that are happening at the moment."

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