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 effect of starting isolation periods from a positive lateral flow result on the use of PCR tests and the Government's ability to track covid-19 variants.

The move away from confirmatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for some groups is compatible with surveillance for COVID-19 variants. The UK Health Security Agency aims to conduct surveillance on at least 10% of community cases for the monitoring of variants. Those groups which will continue to be tested with a PCR test will provide sufficient community-based positive samples to maintain the ability to detect any new mutations in the Omicron or Delta variants or any emerging and new variants.