HM Treasury approved £22 billion of spending this year for the NHS Test and Trace programme. This covers testing to meet demand over the winter. We are providing an additional £7 billion for NHS Test and Trace to support increased testing, including community testing and ongoing improvements to contact tracing. Eighty per cent of this will be directly spent on laboratories, tests and testing kits.

For the week commencing 18 January 2021 the number of tests conducted in pillar 1 was 592,698 against a capacity of 1,352,685, which is a utilisation rate of 43.82%. In pillar 2, the number of tests conducted was 3,233,418 against a capacity of 4,321,944, which is a utilisation rate of 74.81%.

Since the start of the pandemic, we increased the capacity of National Health Service and Public Health England laboratories, as well as setting up an entirely new nationwide network of new Lighthouse laboratories and partner laboratories to process samples. Lighthouse laboratories and partner laboratories have continued to maximise capacity. This includes recruiting staff, mobilising additional equipment and optimising workflows. All Lighthouse laboratories are now working on a 24 hours a day, seven days a week basis.

We do not publish data in the format requested.

Pillar 2 uses Lighthouse laboratories and has partnership arrangements with public, private and academic sector laboratories. The United Kingdom’s daily COVID-19 testing capacity passed the 500,000 on 31 October. Testing capacity in the UK across all pillars between 29 October and 4 November was at 4,367,049 tests, an increase of 21% compared to the previous week.

With the support of NHS England, we have been piloting COVID-19 swab testing in a small number of general practices around the United Kingdom. The aim was to improve access to testing by enabling general practitioners to test symptomatic patients who present to general practice settings, when deemed it clinically appropriate, for example for some patients who are vulnerable and may otherwise struggle to access a test through the main testing routes.

The Government does not publish data in the format requested. The Government publishes information, from 20 March onwards, on daily tests processed and daily testing capacity at GOV.UK. We provide data on daily testing capacity by swab tests, using polymerase chain reaction assay, within pillars 1, 2, and 4 to show if someone has COVID-19; and antibody testing of a blood sample within pillar 3 and pillar 4 to show if people have antibodies from having had COVID-19.

Public Health England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Department have all published guidance relevant to care homes.

Due to the fast-moving situation with the pandemic, all guidance has been published online in order to reach target audiences quickly. The CQC has also released their guidance through a regular weekly bulletin.

A table listing the guidance with dates of issue, and showing those documents shared with Parliamentarians, is attached due to the size of the data.

Public safety remains the Government’s top priority and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been clear from the outset that the National Health Service will get whatever funding it needs to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

£31.9 billion of support for healthcare was set out in the summer economic update. This includes over £15 billion for personal protective equipment (PPE), and £10 billion for NHS Test and Trace. The Government has also confirmed a further package of £3 billion for the NHS as part of the COVID-19 recovery strategy, covering support for winter. The total level of funding that is needed may change further.

Details on a funding package for general practitioners (GPs) of nearly £200 million have been confirmed. This covers the legitimate additional costs of the response borne by GP practices due to the pandemic. NHS providers are currently able to claim for COVID-19 costs retrospectively under the temporary finance regime that has been put in place until the end of September. This is operating at trust/foundation trust level rather than for specific services such as community health services. Allocations totalling an additional £2.7 billion are then being made available to local systems for the rest of the year. Funding specific to Public Health England forms part of the NHS Test and Trace budget and the PPE budget the specific distribution to PHE is currently being agreed.

It is our priority to ensure that everyone is discharged safely from hospital and to the most appropriate available place.

Funding announced alongside the COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements was not conditional on care homes accepting discharged patients. Discharges from hospital are decided by local clinicians and only happen when doctors determine it is in an individual patient’s best interests.

This is an unprecedented global pandemic and at every stage we have been guided by the latest scientific advice. We keep our policies under continuous review, based on the emerging international and domestic evidence.

The available capacity and staffing of the Nightingale hospitals is decided locally by National Health Service trusts and varies over time based on demand. At present, the Nightingale hospitals are on standby but are ready to be stood up if needed. The continued future use of the Nightingale hospitals is currently under consideration.

The Government has stated that the NHS will get what it needs in terms of funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of patients admitted to each of the Nightingale Hospitals is not available in the format requested. Admission data for COVID-19 patients is published online by NHS England and NHS Improvement at trust level but not for individual hospitals.

To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Testing – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library

To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Testing – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library

The Government launched the NHS and Social Care Coronavirus Life Assurance scheme on 20 May 2020. The scheme is non-contributory and pays a £60,000 lump sum where staff who had been recently working where personal care is provided to individuals who have contracted COVID-19 die as a result of the virus.

As of 13 July 2020, the scheme administrator has received 29 claims for social care as a whole in England, of which 25 claims are from the families of staff who had been providing adult social care in a care home. This is out of a total of 57 claims to the scheme. Of these 25, eight have been agreed for payment subject to receiving probate, nine require further information and eight are in the process of consideration.

The Department worked closely with stakeholders in the adult social care sector to ensure the details of the scheme were made as widely available as possible. This included cascading the information to employers through provider representatives, and also through the Care Quality Commission.

During this unprecedented global outbreak, we have kept our social care guidance under constant review and have been working tirelessly with the sector to reduce transmission and save lives. The Government is fully committed to ensuring care homes feel confident in their personal protective equipment (PPE) supply. We are now confident in the stocks and sources of supply of PPE to meet the needs of health and social care over the next seven and 90 days.

More widely, in the long term, we have set out a comprehensive action plan to support the adult social care sector throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. This has included £3.2 billion of funding for councils and providing millions of items of PPE.

Data for median waiting times for MRI, CT and Non-obstetric Ultrasound tests is provided in the following tables. It should be noted that all data is provisional and subject to review.

Data provided is between the months of May 2020 – May 2019 this is the most recent data available as collection and reporting has a two-month delay.

MRI

The development of the Nightingale hospitals was a response to an unprecedented challenge as they provided extra capacity to manage surges in demand due to COVID-19.

To provide additional capacity for the National Health Service the Nightingale hospitals have been flexed to respond to changing demand and it was recently announced that Harrogate and Exeter Nightingale hospitals are to be used to increase diagnostic capacity in a COVID-19 free environment. Regions and host trusts will continue to consider future use and the Nightingales will be an important part of ensuring the NHS has the capacity required at this time and in the coming months.

The Government has taken significant steps to provide financial support for public services during COVID-19, including making £3.2 billion available to local authorities so they can address pressures on local services caused by the pandemic, including in adult social care. To improve transparency, local authorities should also publish on their websites the support they are offering to providers of residential and domiciliary care services, as well as any other social care services they are supporting. We have asked for these to be published by 29 May 2020.

Furthermore, on 15 May we published details of an additional £600 million Infection Control Fund for Adult Social Care to support adult social care providers in England reduce the rate of transmission in and between care homes and to support workforce resilience. The Government will continue to monitor pressures in the National Health Service and local government and will keep future funding under review.

The information requested is not collected centrally.

On 19 March 2020, the Department and the National Health Service co-published COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements, setting out guidance on supporting the safe discharge of patients who no longer need acute care. A copy of this guidance is attached.

The guidance also sets out the steps that care providers should be taking and we provided £1.3 billion to support the process. We have provided advice to care homes throughout the pandemic in response to the latest conditions and emerging evidence.

The COVID-19 hospital discharge service requirements were expected to help free up 15,000 hospital beds across England.

On 2 June, NHS England published an analysis on discharges to care homes. This data was not previously available. The data showed that the proportion of people discharged to care homes, nursing homes and hospices between 15 March and 16 April was 2.8%.

A small number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 may be discharged from the NHS within the 14-day period from the onset of COVID-19 symptoms and also require ongoing social care. If a care home provider does not feel they can provide the appropriate care for these individuals, the individual’s local authority should secure alternative appropriate accommodation and care for the remainder of the required isolation period.