Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time is for (a) patients and (b) staff in care homes to receive their test results for covid-19.

The Department does not hold data on turnaround times for tests broken down in this format.

Since the beginning of September, the median time taken to receive a test result from satellite test centres has decreased from 102 hours to 59 hours.

Symptomatic care home staff are able to access testing via a number of routes such as home testing, and information on the turnaround times for these is available as part of the weekly NHS Test and Trace Statistics Publication, available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-weekly-reports