Care Homes: Coronavirus

(asked on 29th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the announcement by the Government on 28 April 2020 that care home residents will be able to access tests for covid-19, what steps he is taking to provide the care home sector with (a) additional infrastructure and (b) guidance to deliver those tests.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 12th May 2020

The Government has committed to offering a test to every resident in every care home in England, whether they have symptoms or not. We are ramping up capacity with over 450 care homes to receive deliveries on 3 May of over 7,500 individual swab kits. The whole-home programme will be supported by a bespoke digital portal for adult social care testing and a specific helpline. Once the digital portal is in place, we aim to deliver up to 30,000 tests a day to care homes. Detailed and clinically approved guidance and tutorial video to guide staff through the swab collection process has been produced for care home managers.

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