The UK Health Security Agency has agreed a deal with Royal Mail to ramp up delivery capacity for Covid-19 test kits after a surge in demand because of the Omicron wave that swamped the government’s online booking platform for three days in a row.
About 900,000 home deliveries of both PCR and lateral flow test kits will be possible each day from Saturday, double the current level. Around two-thirds of the kits will contain lateral flow tests.
The UK’s testing programme has struggled to accommodate demand for rapid Covid tests after the government announced it was changing the self-isolation rules for double-vaccinated people who are identified as a close contact of an Omicron case. Since Tuesday, they have been able to avoid isolation by testing with lateral flow devices (LFDs) every day for seven days.
Earlier this week, the UKHSA said that the website for ordering LFDs had been “temporarily suspended to fulfil existing orders”, citing “exceptionally high demand”. After the announcement on Wednesday evening, tests were once again available through the website.
The supply of LFDs to pharmacies will also double, to more than 10m per week, and booking slots at PCR testing sites will increase by up to 100,000 a day from Thursday, UKHSA said. It added that it was increasing laboratory capacity for PCR testing by up to 150,000 tests a day
The agency said that “to ensure a good testing supply over the coming weeks” it was also procuring hundreds of millions of more lateral flow tests.
According to health officials, there may still be temporary pauses in ordering or collecting tests in the coming weeks because of exceptionally high demand.
As the UK battles the fast-rising Omicron wave, Covid cases jumped on Wednesday to 78,610 in the latest 24-hour period, the highest daily figure recorded throughout the pandemic. The true number of infections is at least 200,000 a day, according to UKHSA, and could rise to 1m infections a day in the weeks ahead.
Tim Peto, professor of medicine at Oxford university who has led government-funded studies into LFDs, welcomed the boost in deliveries, predicting that the UK would become “much more dependent” on rapid tests as Omicron surged. “PCR capacity is a lot more constrained,” said Peto. “Lateral flow tests will be easier to deal with the high numbers from Omicron.”
But Peto and other scientists said that testing alone would not be enough to cut chains of transmission when faced with the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Prof Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “While we are now, rightly, focusing on supply of tests, we mustn’t ignore the threat to functioning of society as so many essential workers fall ill and have to isolate.” He called on the government to activate “an immediate circuit break” lockdown.
Sajid Javid, UK health secretary, has insisted all week that there was “no shortage of tests”, and told MPs in the House of Commons on Monday that “tens of millions of tests are in stock and millions are arriving each week”.
He welcomed the expansion of the test delivery service, acknowledging that “demand for tests is growing further with the arrival of the Omicron variant”.
UK doubles delivery of lateral flow tests as Omicron cases soar
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