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 potential merits of conducting covid-19 tests on incoming university students this winter, in areas with low current infection rates where testing has been de-prioritised.

We have quickly established walk-through sites and deployed mobile test sites so that almost every university student now has access to testing within one and a half miles when displaying symptoms. In cases of outbreaks we are working with universities to deliver large batches of home test kits which can then be distributed to students isolating in their households or halls of residence to test themselves. Use of multiple new testing technologies for asymptomatic students could significantly improve our detection of positive cases and further reduce the spread of the virus