Prisons: Coronavirus

(asked on 16th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to his Department’s press release, Coronavirus preparedness in prisons, published on 6 November 2020, how many prisons in England and Wales have implemented routine testing of frontline staff and prisoners who arrive from court or transfer from other jails.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 24th November 2020

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has been working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS, and health authority colleagues in England and Wales for a number of months on providing access to Covid-19 tests in a prison environment.

Reception and transfer testing for prisoners is now in place in 23 prisons in England and two in Wales. Further sites are in the process of rolling this out, and we intend to have all prisons implementing this testing by the end of the year.

We have also started regular testing of frontline staff, which is taking place in 50 establishments. This will be rolled out across all prisons in England and Wales by the end of the month. Both directly employed and non-directly employed staff who work with prisoners on a weekly basis are eligible for this testing.

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