Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) how many prison staff have been tested for COVID-19; and (2) how many prisoners in all prisons have been tested for COVID-19.

A testing programme is being conducted to help understand the spread of Coronavirus in prisons and how it is transmitted within individual establishments and across the wider estate began on Monday 20 July.

The testing study is taking place across 28 prisons in England and is being carried out in collaboration with the University of Southampton, Public Health England, Department of Health and Social Care and National Audit Office.

Every one of the 20,000 prisoners and 10,000 staff at the 28 sites will be invited to carry out an antigen test, consisting of mouth and nose swabs, to see if they currently have the virus. Participation is completely voluntary but we encourage as many as possible to carry out the test. The test will be repeated two more times with a gap of three weeks between each test.

This testing study follows a pilot of voluntary testing of both staff and prisoners at HMP Littlehey. This consisted of over 1,000 tests being undertaken and pleasingly no positive results were found.

This testing study runs for 9 to 12 weeks to allow all three testing rounds to be completed.

Currently, the establishments which have started undertaking this COVID-19 prevalence Testing Programme are: Bure, Coldingley, Drake Hall, Frankland, Gartree, High Down, Leeds, Lewes, New Hall, Norwich, Send, The Mount, Wandsworth and Wealstun.

As of 5pm 30th July 2020, there have been 2542 prisoner tests with four positive results. There have been 1571 staff tests with three positive results.

With HMPPS staff being able to self-refer for testing the complete number of staff who have been tested for COVID-19 is unknown by HMPPS. While the total number of tests carried out on prisoners since testing began is also unknown, the Ministry of Justice has started publishing a weekly release of Covid-19 related statistics, which includes confirmed COVID-19 cases in prisoners and children in custody. These statistics provide total numbers across England and Wales.

The statistics release can be found here each Friday:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hm-prison-and-probation-service-covid-19-statistics