Covid: Which areas in England will get rapid turnaround mass testing support?
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen
Mass quick turnaround Covid testing will be rolled out across large parts of England after an initial trial run in Liverpool.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced that directors of public health across England can now request support to deliver mass asymptomatic coronavirus testing in their local areas.
The government is now issuing the new lateral flow tests, which have been introduced in Liverpool, to dozens of local authorities across England - a list is at the bottom of this page.
Mr Hancock said nearly half (66) of all local authorities across the country have taken up the offer of the new lateral flow tests with a turnaround time of under an hour.
The minister told MPs he had written to every director of public health on Monday and was expecting "a whole load more" to sign up for the tests.
The tests have been available since Friday for people who live and work in Liverpool, whether an individual has symptoms or not.
The trial saw huge uptake, with long queues forming at testing centres in the city.
But the pilot has not been without problems.
It emerged last week that one of the new tests that had been due to be used in Liverpool, the saliva-based OptiGene Direct RT-Lamp test, only managed to detect 47% of positive cases in an earlier trial in Salford.
Mr Hancock told the House of Commons: "I can confirm that we are rolling out the sort of mass testing we are seeing in Liverpool, and indeed we earlier piloted in Stoke-on-Trent, across 66 local authorities."
He added: "Last night I wrote to the directors of public health of all local authorities in England saying we can make available these brilliant new lateral flow tests that give results in 15 minutes, and we can make them available to directors of public health right across the country.
"Sixty-six expressed an interest in the first instance, I’m now expecting a whole load more."
Mr Hancock also said that mass testing, like any future vaccine rollout, would be across the UK not just England.
He said: "The UK Government has bought the vaccine for the whole of the UK and it will be rolled out fairly across the whole of the UK with the same prioritisation no matter where you live in this country.
"The same goes for mass testing, making sure we roll that out across the whole UK."
On Friday, queues built up outside the new test centres in Liverpool as they opened at midday.
People waited around 45 minutes outside the Liverpool Tennis Centre, one of the six facilities, before it opened.
Liverpool’s director of public health, Matt Ashton, on Saturday said the mass testing was showing positive signs after thousands of people were tested on the first day.
The programme aims to test up to 50,000 people a day once fully operational, he added.
The city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, on Monday said 23,170 people have been tested for coronavirus in the city since midday on Friday, with 0.7% testing positive.
The Department for Health has released the following list of areas to receive rapid turnaround tests:
Barking and Dagenham
Bexley
Birmingham
Blackburn and Darwen
Blackpool
Bolton
Brent
Bristol
Bury
Calderdale
Camden
City of London
County Durham
Coventry
Darlington
Doncaster
Dudley
East Riding of Yorkshire
Enfield
Essex
Gateshead
Greenwich
Hackney
Halton
Hammersmith and Fulham
Hartlepool
Hertfordshire
Kingston upon Hull
Islington
Kensington and Chelsea
Kingston upon Thames
Knowsley
Lambeth
Lewisham
Luton
Manchester
Middlesbrough
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newham
North Tyneside
Northumberland
Nottingham City
Nottinghamshire
Oldham
Redbridge
Redcar and Cleveland
Richmond upon Thames
Rochdale
Salford
Sefton
South Tyneside
Southwark
St Helen's
Staffordshire
Stockport
Stockton-on-Tees
Sunderland
Tameside
Tower Hamlets
Trafford
Wakefield
Waltham Forest
Wandsworth
Warrington
Wigan
Wirral
Wolverhampton
DHSC said Stoke on Trent, Liverpool and Lancashire have already been provided with lateral flow tests before this week.