Coronavirus: Disease Control

(asked on 19th March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to requisition (a) private hospitals and (b) testing centres to support efforts to control and respond to the covid-19 outbreak; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 27th March 2020

As announced by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on Saturday 21 March, the National Health Service has struck a deal with private hospitals to acquire thousands of extra beds, ventilators and medical staff to fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

An extra 8,000 hospital beds across England, nearly 1,200 ventilators and almost 20,000 fully qualified staff will be available from next week.

From this week, we plan to increase testing to 10,000 a day (up from 5,000 a day last week). Within four weeks, Public Health England and the NHS expect to be conducting 25,000 tests a day – and we will continue to increase testing capacity, up to 250,000 a day.

Reticulating Splines