A drive-through coronavirus testing facility is being set up at Twickenham Stadium as part of efforts to test as many people as possible for Covid-19.
The huge stadium in South West London may no longer be able to hold events, but it will be used to help in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
While isolation helps prevent the spread of the disease between households, testing is crucial to ensure that key workers, including NHS staff, are able to continue to go to work and to ensure the safety of other staff and patients.
Previous drive-through sites have been set up at IKEA in Wembley, the O2 in Greenwich, Gatwick Airport and at Chessington World of Adventures as the government tries to ramp up the number of tests it can administer each day.
Daily testing figures have increased from around 5,000 a day to more than 20,000, however the government aims to ramp up capacity to 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.
Frontline health service staff and other key workers will be able to make appointments to be tested in a drive-through style at the Twickenham facility when it opens.
A pilot service will run for the initial few days of operation before full-scale activity begins.
When the testing site will open is yet to be announced.
In order to increase testing capacity by several thousand a day, the government has partnered with universities, research institutes and companies to roll-out of the network of new labs and field testing sites across the UK, with 32 testing sites opened to date.
The swab tests use PCR technology to identify if you currently have the virus, with testing initially limited to critical key workers, starting with NHS front line staff. This means those who test negative for coronavirus can return to work as soon as possible, and those who test positive are able to recover.
The government is also urgently working on setting up a home-testing service for critical key workers, supported by Amazon’s logistics network and other commercial partners.
Health Minister Lord Bethell said: “The Government is rapidly scaling up the national effort to boost testing capacity for coronavirus to protect the vulnerable, support our NHS, and ultimately save lives.
“This new service will help end the uncertainty of whether NHS and social care staff and other key workers need to stay at home, meaning those who test negative will be able to return to work.
“This is a national effort and we are proud to be working with a number of partners to turn this ambition into a reality and roll out additional capacity to where it is needed.”
Rugby Football Union CEO, Bill Sweeney, said: “The RFU is pleased to be able to support the COVID-19 drive-through testing programme at Twickenham Stadium for NHS and other key workers.
“We receive tremendous support from frontline services during match days at Twickenham and we are grateful for the opportunity to be able to support key workers during this severe national crisis with the use of our site and staff to support operationally.”
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