Home Care Services: Coronavirus

(asked on 10th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will prioritise domiciliary care workers for weekly covid-19 tests.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 9th February 2021

On 23 November 2020, we began offering Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered domiciliary care organisations access to regular, weekly COVID-19 testing for their carers looking after people in their own homes.

Those working for CQC-registered organisations are able to access weekly polymerase chain reaction tests to administer at home, which will help identify more asymptomatic cases and protect care recipients who are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Proactively testing asymptomatic carers helps to identify those who unknowingly have the virus and enables those who test positive and their contacts to self-isolate. This is crucial to break the chains of transmission of the virus.

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