The second Lighthouse Lab in Alderley Park is now operational, testing thousands of patient samples each day for COVID-19.
The Lighthouse Labs will be the biggest network of diagnostic testing facilities in British history, testing samples from drive-through test sites across the country
The Health Secretary Matt Hancock officially opened the first Lighthouse Lab in Milton Keynes last week. The final site will open in Glasgow next week.
Every day, new drive-through testing sites are being opened to fill the testing capacity the Lighthouse Labs can now provide, with 20 new sites now taking patient samples across the country.
The government has previously announced that the target is to reach 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of the month.
Earlier this month, Mr Hancock unveiled the government’s five-pillar plan to rapidly scale up coronavirus testing across the UK.
The new five-pillar plan outlines the ambitions to:
- Pillar 1: scale up swab testing in PHE labs and NHS hospitals for those with a medical need and the most critical workers to 25,000 a day in England by mid to late April.
- Pillar 2: deliver increased commercial swab testing for critical key workers in the NHS across the UK before, then expanding to key workers in other sectors.
- Pillar 3: develop blood testing to help know if people across the UK have the right antibodies and so have high levels of immunity to coronavirus.
- Pillar 4: conduct UK-wide surveillance testing to learn more about the spread of the disease and help develop new tests and treatments.
- Pillar 5: create a new national effort for testing, to build a mass testing capacity for the UK at a completely new scale.
