Covid-19

Baroness Pidding Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness is entirely right. Serum offers an encouraging opportunity, not least because it is a proven technology. The national blood transfusion service has been asked to start investigating how to collect serum, and a grant for the purchase of new machines to help that has already been made.

[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, my question is with regard to testing, and in particular the drive-through testing centres, where we are not seeing maximum take-up. On the priority for testing, that is obviously our key workers, both in the NHS and care homes, but I am mindful that some who may not be able to drive or who may not have access to cars. Therefore, this itself presents a challenge with regard to drive-through centres and their geographic positioning, as they can be considerable distances away. I appreciate that the Minister has already spoken about home testing, and the Statement makes brief reference to the use of mobile units. Surely this has to be the way forward, taking the testing to essential people who are in the front line. Can we not ramp up this operation, employing the expertise in logistical functions of the military? I would be grateful if my noble friend could provide more detail as to what mobile units are and how they operate.

[Lord Bethell]

I would like to recruit my noble friend to our testing organisation, because she has exactly the right ideas, and the programme she described is exactly what we are doing. The Army is putting together 50 transit vans with tents and cones to be able to travel to places such as care homes to conduct testing, particularly at times of epidemic. Amazon is putting together home testing kits, which means that no one need drive anywhere to have a test, and we are working with care homes so that care workers can take the swabs and then drop off bags of them at a reasonable place so that they can be processed by our laboratories. Drive-in testing was an early but limited programme, and we have a lot more going on than that.