Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that frontline workers are tested regularly for covid-19.

Frontline workers in health and care settings are in persistent close contact with a constantly changing number of potentially infectious people. This puts them at higher risk of infection, and we have extended testing to them regardless of whether they have symptoms, because doing this will help protect the people they care for. Regular asymptomatic testing is best conducted through a sample of staff enrolled in surveillance studies – for National Health Service staff this will be Public Health England’s SIREN study.

On 10 July, the Government also rolled out a pilot to test people without symptoms working in high-contact professions, such as taxi drivers, cleaners and sales assistants.