Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of extending covid-19 daily contact testing to workers and workplaces outside of the critical sectors already identified by the Government instead of requiring people to self-isolate.

We are currently reviewing the potential merits of extending workplace daily contact testing to additional sites outside of the critical sectors already identified by the Government. Our initial focus is on completing the extension of the workplace daily contact testing scheme to 2,000 sites, as announced on 26 July. As of 16 August, contacts who are fully vaccinated do not have to self-isolate, but daily contact testing will continue in approved sites for contacts who are not yet fully vaccinated.