Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to set up more genome sequencing centres for the detection of covid-19 variants.

There are existing plans in progress to implement genome sequencing capabilities within existing public health laboratories that will enable rapid sequencing and analysis of COVID-19 samples and to create a rapid integrated test and sequencing system within existing Departmental facilities to provide rapid test, sequencing and analysis of COVID-19 pillar 2 samples. These new operations will launch in phases between May and September 2021. In parallel, existing sequencing capacity is being expanded to maintain the highest levels of national surveillance of COVID-19.