Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether (a) different swabs for a person or (b) individuals are each counted in the number of covid-19 tests conducted.

The number of tests processed or conducted is not the same as the number of people tested. For clinical reasons, some people are tested more than once. Therefore, the number of tests will be higher than the number of people tested. The figure for number of people tested each week is for people who have newly been tested for COVID-19 in Pillars 1 and 2.

This figure removes duplicate tests, so an individual is only counted once even if they have had multiple tests (including tests under different pillars and tests that took place months apart).

The weekly Test and Trace bulletin contains both the number of tests conducted and the number of people newly tested.