COVID: Businesses told to pay for coronavirus tests to check staff

Businesses will be liable to pay for their own COVID-19 testing when all remaining restrictions are scrapped.

Boris Johnson will today announce his blueprint for exiting out the pandemic, following a Cabinet meeting to discuss measures.

Widely expected to be ditched are free lateral flow tests, as well as the legal duty for those who test positive for coronavirus to have to self-isolate.

The requirement is expected to be lifted on Thursday.

The prime minister’s announcement will come 24 hours after it was confirmed the Queen had tested positive for COVID-19.

For businesses who wish their staff to continue testing for COVID, they will have to stump up the cost, business minister Paul Scully confirmed.

He told Times Radio: “We don’t test for flu, we don’t test for other diseases, and if the variants continue to be as mild as Omicron then there’s a question mark as to whether people will go through that regular testing anyway”.

Scully added: “But if employers want to be paying (for) tests and continuing a testing regime within their workplace, then that will be for them to pay at that point.”

On questions about what effect this would have on the vulnerable, Scully said the government was concerned about them but "we’re not going to be having a testing regime for the next 50 years”.

It has been reported older and more vulnerable people will still have access to tests.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has criticised the Government for plans to end free lateral flow tests.

Speaking to Sky on Trevor Phillips on Sunday, he said: "I'm particularly concerned about the end of free testing. I mean, it's a bit like being to one up with 10 minutes left to play and subbing your best defender."

Health experts have also been critical of the decision to abandon the requirement to quarantine after a positive result.

Chair of the Council of the British Medical Association Dr Chaand Nagpaul called it an “odd decision to make” when there are “more people dying, more people in the hospital” than before Plan B measures were introduced last year in response to the pre-Christmas rising tide of Omicron cases.

Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of Sage’s modelling subgroup, told Times Radio there was a “real concern” that getting rid of the rules would lead to more infections in workplaces.

Former Conservative minister Tim Loughton said he thought testing should continue to be “widely” available.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, the East Worthing and Shoreham MP welcomed the attempt to “get back to normal” but said he had “slight apprehensions” about curtailing free tests.

“I think we still do need to have testing available widely because I think that is the reassurance people can have that they’ve taken all possible precautions and they don’t want to infect other people,” he said.

But Mr Johnson told the BBC that Britain was in a “different world” after coming out of the Omicron variant wave, with the numbers of patients in intensive care “way down”.

As of Sunday, UK Government data shows that 11,555 people are currently in hospital with the illness, with 331 of those in ventilation beds.

Mr Johnson said the latest data meant it was time for the UK to shift the balance away from “state mandation” and towards “personal responsibility”.

In comments made while in Munich on Saturday, he said it was “important that people should feel confident again” and that he wanted to “see our country really getting back on its feet” in the aftermath of the pandemic.

But the Prime Minister refused to rule out further lockdowns should future mutations not prove to be as mild as predicted, saying he would have to be “humble in the face of nature”.