Advertisement

Asymptomatic testing extended to thousands of workers in England

<span>Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of people in England whose jobs put them at a high risk of catching Covid-19 will be tested for the virus even if they have no symptoms, the government has announced.

Taxi drivers, cleaners and shop workers will get tests as part of a pilot scheme beginning immediately. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it hoped the scheme would improve understanding of the prevalence of the virus among people judged to be at higher risk.

Meanwhile, new figures show that the government failed to meet a target to have all test results back within 24 hours by the end of June.

Related: UK coronavirus live: repaying crisis debt will take 'decades' and higher taxes likely, says IFS

Boris Johnson made the commitment to the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt during prime minister’s questions in early June amid concerns that not enough people were being tested for Covid-19. But the DHSC statistics suggest there was only a minimal increase in the proportion of tests completed within the timeframe.

The pilot testing scheme includes BT, Boots, the taxi company Addison Lee and the services firm Mitie. Local authorities in Bradford, Newham, Brent and Oldham will also select groups of people deemed to be high-risk for asymptomatic testing.

Care workers and some NHS staff already have access to asymptomatic testing, and the pilot expands this further. The DHSC said each of the businesses involved would receive thousands of tests for staff, for home testing or mobile testing units.

Local authorities will book tests for people at walk-in test sites. Those who test positive will need to self-isolate and the results will be shared with the NHS test and trace programme so contacts can be found, the department has said.

default

The latest testing data shows that when combining the figures for all methods of community testing in England – home test kits, regional test sites, mobile testing units and “satellite” test centres – 54.9% of people received their results within 24 hours in the week ending 1 July, up from 41.3% in the previous week.

About 34.9% of people waited between 24 and 48 hours, down from 44.6%; 7.5% waited between 48 and 72 hours, down from 10.6%; and 1.8% waited longer than 72 hours, down from 2.5%.

Johnson said on 3 June: “We already do 90% of tests turned around within 24 hours. Of the tests conducted at the 199 testing centres, as well as the mobile centres, they’re all done within 24 hours, and I can undertake to him [Hunt] now to get all tests turned around within 24 hours by the end of June except for difficulties with postal tests or insuperable problems like that.”

New data also shows that during the first five weeks of test and trace, 144,501 people identified as recent close contacts of people who had tested positive for Covid-19 were reached and asked to self-isolate.

This amounted to 85% of the 169,863 identified close contacts. The remaining 25,362 contacts were not reached, in some case because no contact details were provided.

Tracers contacted 3,366 people diagnosed with Covid-19 in the most recent week, the lowest weekly total since test and trace was launched on 28 May.