Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to standardise NHS and care home approaches to covid-19 testing for residents in care homes.

Our testing strategy includes ensuring that the approach to testing is standardised and appropriate to the setting. Our overall goal remains timely access to COVID-19 testing for all who need it.

The approach to testing across the National Health Service and care homes for staff, patients and residents is standardised, in that:

- As part of our current prioritisation policy, all NHS and care home staff, patients and residents with and without symptoms are eligible for testing;

- We are working to support equitable ease of access to testing across NHS and care home settings, including allocating 30,000 tests per day specifically for care homes. Additional means of delivering tests to care homes include satellite testing units and mobile testing units; and

- Guidance on carrying out swab testing is available to ensure correct administration and a reliable result. Care home staff should also be trained to check residents’ temperatures and measure other vital signs.