UK to roll out tests for asymptomatic patients

London, January 10

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The UK on Sunday announced a major expansion of Covid-19 tests being made available more widely to asymptomatic people as part of efforts to control the rapid spread of a new coronavirus variant, which has led to Britain hitting the grim milestone of 80,000 deaths from the virus.

The community testing regime, until now available to those displaying symptoms, has been expanded to cover anyone unable to work from home to access the rapid lateral flow tests that give results in 30 minutes. The move comes as hundreds of thousands of people aged 80 and over were sent letters to book a coronavirus vaccination at new National Health Service vaccination centres that will be up and running from Monday.

“With more than 1,000 vaccination sites across the country, including seven new mass vaccination centres, we will help protect hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people over the coming weeks as we accelerate towards offering 12 million people the jab in England by the middle of February,” said UK Boris Johnson.

“Our plan is to vaccinate as many people as possible across the entire United Kingdom as quickly as we can… There are deeply challenging weeks ahead, but today signals another significant step forward in the race to protect the public, and defeat the virus,” he said. — PTI