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 implications for the Government's strategy on tackling the covid-19 outbreak of recent trends in the number of care home residents testing positive for covid-19.

Testing in care homes is a crucial part of our strategy to help prevent and control outbreaks. We are continuing to prioritise Care Home Testing, and we are issuing more than 100,000 tests a day to care homes across the country prioritising high priority outbreak areas.

We have met our 7 September target of providing testing kits to all care homes for older people and people with dementia who have registered for regular retesting kits. In addition, all other care homes have been able to place orders for test kits from 31 August. Since they were eligible to apply for regular repeat testing on 31 August, 4,576 specialist homes in England have applied for tests.

Where an outbreak has been identified, we test all staff and residents as a priority, with all those who test negative being tested again four to seven days later. Any home with a current outbreak can continue regular testing of staff and residents who have previously tested negative.