Baby Care Units: Coronavirus

(asked on 13th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 June 2020 to Question 64109 on Baby Care Units: Coronavirus, what plans he has to introduce rapid covid-19 testing for parents of babies in neonatal care.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 24th July 2020

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, neonatal services have been working hard to support parents to care for their babies while still ensuring that services are safe.

Information produced by the British Association of Paediatric Medicine sets out that the same arrangements for testing should be offered to parents of babies in neonatal care as are applied to staff, in order to minimise unnecessary separation. This includes testing of symptomatic parents and testing of suspected contacts.

Current clinical advice is that asymptomatic testing can be conducted where clinically appropriate for outbreak investigation and infection control. These decisions are made by local decision makers based on patient and procedural risk.

The sixth week of NHS Test and Trace figures published on 16 July show anyone getting a test at a regional test site or mobile testing unit can expect their result by the next day.

Reticulating Splines