ENGLAND’S Education Secretary has suggested that people struggling to get their hands on Covid tests should “refresh their webpage”.
Nadhim Zahawi’s comments come amidst a shortage of lateral flow tests. Demand has outstripped supply following the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
At the end of December, Health Secretary Sajid Javid wrote to MPs over concerns about a dearth of lateral flow tests, saying the supply was being tripled in January and February from a pre-Omicron plan of 100 million to 300 million per month.
However, he said ministers expect a need to “constrain” supply for the next two weeks.
As England’s schools look to reopen after the festive season, the Tory Education Secretary has said that “all secondary school students should undertake one on-site test on return” and continue to test twice weekly going forward.
Asked how people could be expected to follow the guidance if there was a lack of tests, Zahawi said people should “refresh their webpage” if they “feel” that tests are unavailable.
He told Sky News: “One of the things that we’ve done is increased the supply of lateral flow tests so there was about 100 million a month, it’s now 300m a month. We’ve trebled the deliveries, from about 300,000 a day to 900,000 a day.
“So the supply will absolutely be there. If people feel that they can’t get supply they should just refresh their webpage. It is pretty much delivering with that additional supply coming through.”
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He went on: “For school testing, I deliberately chose to make sure that we had a different route of supply for the schools which I’m confident all schools have now for this week their testing that they need to carry out for the secondary school pupils to be tested and feel safe in class.”
Amid the shortage of lateral flow tests, the UK Government has been facing calls to give NHS staff priority access to any supply.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the British Medical Association (BMA) said health workers should come first when trying to access the rapid coronavirus tests in a bid to ease staffing issues.
The BMA said there are more than 18,000 staff absent from acute hospital trusts in England, either with Covid-19 or because they are self-isolating, adding it expected that figure to be much higher when the most recent data is published.
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