Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to increase the number of walk-in covid-19 testing centres available to people without vehicle access in urban areas.

We have provided a range of ways for people to be tested. For those without access to a car this has included satellite deliveries to centres at places like hospitals that have a particularly urgent or significant need, delivering test kits to people’s homes and offering walk-up appointments at mobile testing units. As our capacity has increased, we are able to expand the range of options for people. We have also made changes to home testing to allow people to drop their tests at Royal Mail priority post boxes.

Local testing centres are being set up across the country. We have increased the number of local/walk-in test sites to over 100 with more opening each week. We are planning to open additional sites to bring the total number of testing sites to 500 by the end of October.