Covid-19 test centre for health and care workers opens in Eastwood

Southend Hospital’s Lighthouse child development centre, near the Kingsdown School in Snakes Lane, has been designated as a testing site.

The centre will undertake antigen testing to determine whether health and care workers have Covid-19.

NHS or care workers or their families who are suffering symptoms of Covid-19 will be tested at the centre.

Trevor Harp, Southend Council’s cabinet member for health and adult social care, said: “We’re really pleased we can offer our frontline social workers in adult and children’s services the opportunity to be tested if they or a member of their household are self-isolating after showing symptoms of Covid-19.

“This is part of the ongoing work we are doing to support our frontline key workers and protect them, while still providing essential social care services to vulnerable members of the community.

“The Lighthouse Centre was identified as a site for local testing by the Essex Resilience Forum and it is for frontline staff across health and social care.

“We can of course only comment on the tests on our staff and so far there haven’t been any carried out as the facility has only just opened.”

The council is considering when to introduce testing for other key workers at the centre, but has not confirmed any plans at this stage.

Mark Flewitt, deputy mayor of Southend and councillor for St Laurence Ward - where the centre is located - welcomed the news.

He said: “I was really excited about it in a sad way - in that we should not have to be doing it, but I’m proud that St Laurence ward is the location.

“I know it will be based on Government ordered need first - those that are doing the work on behalf of us who need testing or isolating.

“We need testing to get more control over the virus, we won’t have complete control until we get a vaccine, and when we come back from this, we can’t act the same again.”

Meanwhile, the Government is doing its “very best” to hit the 100,000-a-day coronavirus testing target set by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, a minister has said.

Local government minister Simon Clarke admitted reaching the target was a huge challenge but suggested the Government was still on track.

A gulf has opened up between the number of frontline workers being tested and testing capacity within the system.

Latest official figures show just 19,316 tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am on Monday, while the most recent total testing capacity is 36,000.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Mr Clarke said the UK was seeing “exponential growth” in terms of testing capabilities.

“We are doing our very best to make sure we hit that target,” he added.

“It’s the right target, it’s both what our science and the World Health Organisation’s approach would suggest is the right thing to do.”

The Government is working to ensure more key workers are eligible to have the tests so “every possible slot is filled”, he said.

He said it was “highly unfair” to Mr Hancock to suggest the ambition to reach 100,000 tests a day was not “empirically grounded”.

He added: “As I say, we are going to move from 26 current testing facilities to 50. That will in turn obviously bring those centres closer to more people and make it more viable to go there.

“We’re increasing the groups of key workers who can go and be tested.”

It follows a major report which said testing and contact tracing in the wider community is the “most promising approach” in the short term to helping lift the Covid-19 lockdown.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study said isolating people with coronavirus and tracing their contacts so they also isolate - an approach abandoned by the UK Government early on - is the key to controlling further outbreaks of coronavirus.

It comes as former health secretary Jeremy Hunt took to social media on Monday to say contact tracing “needs to be our next national mission”.

Mr Hunt, who is chairman of the Health Select Committee, added on Tuesday: “Mass contact tracing is the only internationally proven alternative to mass lockdown. We need to act fast.”

The OECD report said Covid-19 infections would “rebound rapidly” if countries just moved to lift their lockdowns completely, and urged them to ramp up contact tracing.

The study argued that “strong and effective testing, tracking and tracing (TTT) is needed” and “is the most promising approach in the short run to bringing - and keeping - the epidemic under control without resorting to widespread lockdowns of social and economic life”.

It added: “The TTT approach may be used to block the initial or recurrent spreads of a pathogen, aiming for a rapid extinction of local, well-defined outbreaks that collectively can control an epidemic.”

The Government has come under intense scrutiny over its testing and contact tracing policy after Public Health England advised ministers in early March that contact tracing should be stopped.

The UK approach has contrasted with other countries such as Singapore and South Korea, which have successfully kept up contact tracing to contain their outbreaks.

Germany, which has a far lower case and death rate than the UK, has also worked on contact tracing.

Mr Hancock told MPs on Friday that contact tracing was part of the strategy going forward and would be introduced again, admitting that “it wasn’t possible when we had a small number of tests”.

The Government is hoping that a contact tracing app being developed by NHSX will enable larger-scale contact tracing and will “assist individuals to do contact tracing themselves”, Mr Hancock said.

Mr Clarke said contact tracing was an issue for the Department of Health when asked about it on the Today programme.

It follows reports that around 5,000 environmental officers offered their help with contact tracing but did not get a response from ministers.

Public Health England has repeatedly suggested there was little point to continuing contact tracing once the virus started spreading on a large scale in the community.

A report on Tuesday from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change argues that mass testing of the British population is needed and “planning to scale operations must commence immediately”.

It says a testing minister must be appointed and the Government must scale up antigen (swab) testing by every means possible.

It also calls on ministers to recognise the importance of antibody tests and “not let perfection be the enemy of good enough”.

It said: “Modelling by Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Romer, shows that mass testing, based on tests less accurate than 98%, can still be part of a strategy of mass testing to end lockdown.”

Daniel Sleat, co-author of the paper, said the report “sets out a path for the Government to reach mass community testing”.

“This must form a central element in any credible and sustainable exit from lockdown,” he added.

“To achieve this ambition the Government must make systemic