Firstly, to offer your client some insight on this new expansion to the rapid testing programme, free rapid tests is being offered to everyone across England as regular rapid testing has become even more important to ensure that the country reduces the way coronavirus spreads. Updates will be made to the NHS Covid-19 app in England to coincide with the universal testing offer.
The main reason for this development is because one in three people with coronavirus do not experience any symptoms and may be spreading the virus without knowing it. Rapid testing can detect cases quickly so that people with positive results can isolate immediately and reduce onward transmission. So far, rapid testing has been available to those most at risk and people who need to leave home for work, including frontline NHS workers, care home staff and residents, and school children and their families.
Thousands of businesses in England have also registered their interest to provide rapid tests to their employees, and free at home testing, whereby employees test themselves at home, is being offered to companies with over 10 workers where on-site testing is impossible. The expanded regular testing for people without symptoms will be delivered through a home ordering service, which allows people to order lateral flow tests online and have them delivered to their home.
It is also available through workplace testing programmes, on-site or at home, community testing offered by all local authorities, and collection at a local PCR test site during specific test collection time windows.
As for whether this particular expansion, to give free tests to everyone in England, will affect your client’s own testing plans, the answer is maybe. If your client is implementing a testing programme that is not connected to the Government’s rapid testing initiative, it is unlikely that they will be affected. However, if your client has registered for either the on-site rapid testing programme or the at-home expansion of it, they may be positively affected by the new development.
This is because the rapid test kits offered to employers are only free until the end of June 2021, meaning your client will need to pay for the kits from July onwards; however, with this new development, it seems that rapid test kits will be readily available to everyone for free for as long as it is required, and your client may not need to pay for on-site tests. The details of this are yet to be explained by the Government, though, so your client should keep up to date with government guidance for further news.
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