The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has claimed it has successfully hit a target to supply Covid-19 test kits to all English care homes by 6 June.
The government has provided 1,071,103 test kits to 8,984 care homes, and can send out over 50,000 test kits a day, DHSC said in a statement.
Last month the department pledged by 6 June that “every care home for the over-65s will have been offered testing for residents and staff”.
“We have now managed successfully to offer tests to every care home that is eligible, both for staff testing and for residents to be tested,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured).
“What that means is that for about three-quarters of a million people living and working in nearly 9,000 eligible care homes, the tests have been delivered,” he added.
Shadow care minister Liz Kendall however accused the government of moving the goalposts. On 15 May, Hancock said the government would “test every resident and every member of staff in our elderly care homes in England between now and early June”.
Kendall said: “Last month the Health Secretary promised that by 6 June, all residents and staff in care homes for the over 65s would be tested.
“Today he said that care homes would only have tests ‘delivered’. This isn’t good enough and the government has been too slow to act,” she added.
