Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to enable residents in supported living facilities for disabled people to be tested for covid-19.
We are rolling out testing of all staff and residents in extra care and supported living settings which meet certain risk-based criteria. These settings must be a closed community with substantial facilities shared between multiple people and, where most residents receive personal care (rather than help with cooking, cleaning and shopping).
If a supported living or extra care setting has a suspected outbreak, they should contact their local health protection team immediately who will undertake an initial risk assessment, provide advice on outbreak management and decide what testing is needed.
Our testing policy is based on clinical advice on relative priorities and available testing capacity and our testing policies continue to be reviewed on an ongoing basis.