Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many days it takes to identify new cases of the P1 Brazilian variant of covid-19 using genomic sequencing

On average, to report the variant profile for a person from taking a test to a confirmed specific variant positive result takes approximately ten days. NHS Test and Trace have established higher priority rapid processes for testing individuals who within the national surveillance programme are suspected to be at higher risk of being P1 variant positive. These higher priority channels can reduce the overall time by one to two days.