Home Covid testing kits available

HOME coronavirus testing kits are now available in West Berkshire.

The community collect kits are available to families and households of schoolchildren, members of support bubbles with children, early years/childcare providers and jobs such as school bus drivers and sports coaches.

West Berkshire Council said that the home lateral flow test (LFT) kits were available from Tuesday at testing sites in Highwood Copse Primary School, Thatcham Rugby Club, Hungerford Rugby Football Club and Burghfield Community Sports Association.

The centres opened in February to prevent essential workers who may be asymptomatic from transmitting the virus without realising.

Home test kits are also available from the Newbury Showground testing site.

Kits are also available to eligible people through the online booking system which can be accessed at https://www.gov.uk/ order-coronavirus-rapid-lateralflow-tests

One positive test and one void test were recorded at the Highwood Copse centre last week out of 189 conducted.

Council figures said that 189 tests were conducted at Thatcham, 70 at Hungerford and 448 at Burghfield.

Council leader Lynne Doherty (Con Speen) encouraged people to be tested and maintain it over the Easter holidays.

She added that there were more than enough kits to meet demand.

The council has widened the criteria to anyone who has a valid reason to travel or interact with others, including care home visitors, parents/carers who wish to undertake supervised tests before using the home test kits, or anyone who does not have access to a testing kit via another route.

The council encouraged people to take up the offer of twice-weekly (LFT) testing.

It said it is important that those who are eligible come along to one of the sites and be regularly tested to minimise the spread of Covid-19.

All businesses, including those with less than 50 employees, can apply for the free Covid19 working testing programme until tomorrow.

In the meantime, selfemployed and small businesses (under 50 employees) can visit district testing sites for twice weekly testing.

The Government has also announced that LFT testing will continue beyond March 31 until at least the end of June 2021.

The council said that this would result in existing sites needing to be relocated.