Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with Public Health England on testing (a) capacity and (b) allocations in the regions of England.
We allocate more testing to higher prevalence areas in line with the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s reporting. Allocation decisions are frequently and systematically reviewed to ensure we are using our testing where it can be most effective. We are working with Public Health England to manage the prioritisation process to ensure that we are able to provide appropriate testing for both outbreak management and surveillance purposes. We have exceeded our target of reaching 500,000 testing capacity by the end of October.