Royal Anglians start operating pop-up coronavirus testing centres

Soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment have been running a mobile Covid-19 testing centre, as the government looks to hit its 100,000 tests a day target.

The mobile centre started on Saturday, 25 April in Hemel Hempstead, before moving to Watford and Stevenage on Sunday and Monday; each day it will be stationed at a different location across the Anglia region.

The tests are for key workers, and are booked via the government website on the same morning.

  • Soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment operate a mobile testing centre (Pictures from the MoD).

Those who book a slot are invited to drive onto the site and are issued with testing kits.

Read more: Testing for healthcare workers must not be on 'first come, first served' basis after slots run out again

Contact between the public and soldiers is minimised via the use of mobile phones, and the tests themselves are self-administered.

The government have set a target of completing 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.

The soldiers will operate the testing centre at a different site each day Credit: MoD

In Norfolk, chances of meeting that target have been boosted by the creation of three new testing centres.

They have been set up at Norwich Research Park, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and the James Paget Hospital at Gorleston.

There are also national testing centres in Ipswich, Peterborough and Stansted Airport, while Milton Keynes is home to one of the UK's so-called 'super-labs'.

Coronavirus: Everything you need to know