300 more firms sign up for free rapid workplace test kits

HUNDREDS more businesses are to begin testing their employees for coronavirus following a Mail on Sunday campaign.

Over the past week, 300 companies have signed up to Matt Hancock’s workplace swabs scheme, quadrupling the total to 412. The Government will pay for rapid testing kits that give results in half an hour for any firm with at least 50 employees.

The Health Secretary revealed more than 5,000 companies had expressed an interest since he wrote in the MoS last week about the scheme’s expansion.

The surge is a major boost for the MoS Tests At Work campaign, launched last month to get workers safely back to factories, plants, shops and offices – and reboot the economy.

Mr Hancock last night thanked The Mail on Sunday for encouraging companies to take action.

He said: ‘It is important that testing is normalised as part of working life, and so I am grateful to The Mail on Sunday for their campaign to encourage businesses to take up our offer of rapid testing for staff.

‘Everyone who can work from home must continue to do so, to protect themselves, others, and the NHS. But working from home is not possible for everyone, which is why we launched the workplace testing scheme.’

Typically firms are testing staff at least once a week and allowing staff who come into contact with a Covid sufferer to continue to come in if they test negative for seven consecutive days.

Last night, Jaguar Land Rover, Carling brewer Molson Coors and Northumbrian Water joined John Lewis, steel maker Tata, energy giant EDF and other firms in backing our campaign.

Jaguar has been testing employees at its plants in Solihull and Halewood. It said it had delivered more than 12,000 tests with just one per cent coming back positive.