Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of tests reported as positive for covid-19 were in respect of people who have taken more than one test at the same time in the most recent period for which figures are available; and what assessment he has made of whether the proportion of such positive tests conducted in that way has changed since the start of the outbreak.

The people tested measure for United Kingdom statistics was initially used to avoid counting one person tested several times in a short space of time.
Many people are now retested multiple times for valid reasons, such as regular testing of health and care workers over several months. This means that the ‘tests processed’ figure, which we have published since 4 July 2020, is a better measure of the scale of the testing service.