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 effect of not requiring covid-19 testing for hospital discharges into the community where care is not required on rates of community covid-19 transmission.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies discussed the effect that discharging patients from hospital into the community without testing had on COVID-19 community infection rates when considering nosocomial infections. It found that while this likely drove onward community transmission during the first wave of COVID-19 infections, it was less likely to do so during a second wave, due to the improved infection control measures implemented in hospitals.