Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the NHS emergency department opt-out testing programme on early diagnosis rates for (a) HIV, (b) hepatitis B and (c) hepatitis C.

A public health evaluation of the emergency department blood-borne virus opt-out testing programme for the first 34 sites taking part showed that there were 3,667 new diagnoses of hepatitis B, 831 of hepatitis C, and 719 of HIV between April 2022 and December 2024.

Approximately 50% of all people diagnosed with hepatitis B and hepatitis C were newly diagnosed through the programme, compared to 8.3% for HIV. The vast majority, or 73.4%, of people newly diagnosed had no record of a previous bloodborne virus test, which indicates that the testing programme has been successful in accessing a population with different demographics and risk factors to testing offered in other settings and supporting the earlier diagnosis of these individuals.

The public health evaluation of the emergency department opt-out testing programme is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bloodborne-viruses-opt-out-testing-in-emergency-departments/public-health-evaluation-of-bbv-opt-out-testing-in-eds-in-england-33-month-final-report-2025