military

Good to see that testing may be coming to a place near you rather than everything being concentrated in urban centres.

The military has started testing essential workers in the UK for coronavirus in mobile units operating in “hard to reach” areas.

At least 96 new pop-up facilities, which will travel to care homes, police and fire stations, prisons and benefits centres, are planned in total.

Eleven of those mobile sites are up-and-running in areas including Salisbury, Carlisle and Watford.

It comes as the government aims to reach 100,000 tests a day by Thursday. 

The latest figures released by the government reveal a running total of 20,732 deaths of people with coronavirus, not including those in English care homes, which are collated separately.

There were 29,058 tests carried out on Saturday, an increase from the 28,760 tests carried out the day before, but still far short of the government’s daily target of 100,000 – which it aims to achieve by the end of April.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show the government has to “ramp testing right up” but added it was “on track” to hit its target.

“We have certainly got to get the daily testing right up to hundreds of thousands which, along with the tracking and tracing, gives us… more flexibility because we can open up measures, open up access,” Mr Raab said.

“That, along with the vaccine and therapeutics will be the medium to long-term way of dealing with coronavirus sustainably and responsibly for good.”