Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government is trialing a range of new, faster tests that can give instant results and hoped to roll them out towards the end of the year.
LONDON - Britain plans to bring in regular, population-wide testing for COVID-19 so it can suppress the spread of the virus and ease restrictions that have crippled its economy without triggering a second wave in one of the worst-hit countries in the world.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has been criticised by political opponents and health experts for being too slow to go into lockdown and in rolling out testing to know how far the virus had spread. "There are new technologies coming on track which we are buying and testing now," he said."We'll ramp it up certainly over the remainder of this year."
London's Heathrow Airport said on Wednesday that a testing area was ready to open should Britain approve a rule change and allow two tests, one on arrival and one some days later, to cut the quarantine time for travellers from the current two weeks. For the current lab-based tests, Britain's government says it currently has a daily testing capacity of more than 335,000, although in August between 150,000 and 190,000 tests have actually been processed on any given day.
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