Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of testing and chemical supply to support 200,000 covid-19 tests a day.

Since NHS Test and Trace launched on 28 May, we have exceeded the 200,000 testing capacity target, with current capacity standing at 309,921 as of 12 October 2020.

Along with home-testing and satellite kits, we have established a large network of testing sites across the United Kingdom with 77 regional test sites, 172 local test services (walk through), 21 satellite testing centres and 258 mobile testing units. We will look to increase this in the coming months to meet our needs.

In addition to the five Lighthouse laboratories operating currently, we have announced the addition of new Lighthouse laboratories in Newport, Newcastle, Bracknell and Charnwood to the national laboratory network. We are also using additional ‘surge’ laboratory capacity to process more tests in the short-term. We are working to ensure that we continue to support scaling capacity, allowing more people to be tested daily.