COVID-19 Testing

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 13 October 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:36, 13 October 2020

I thank Rhianon Passmore for that. She is right to say that the new centre at Imperial Park 5 became operational on 5 October. It's already able to process 10,000 tests a day and will be able to process 20,000 tests a day when fully operational in the next couple of weeks. So, that will further boost our lab capacity, the resilience of our system and will help us to go on improving turnaround times. So, I'm very pleased to be able to give that reassurance to the Member that we are using that opportunity, as we are using the £32 million that the Minister for health was able to make available to Public Health Wales to provide 24-hour working in regional labs in Swansea, Cardiff and in Rhyl and six new hot labs, situated in acute general hospitals.

The local test sites at universities—the one in Treforest opened on 25 September, the one in Swansea opened earlier this week, the one in Bangor will open on 16 October, in Cardiff on 16 October, in Aberystwyth on 19 October. So, once again, we are moving rapidly to make sure that those local testing facilities are available. I want to give the Member an assurance that we would use our mobile testing unit as well, so that if there were a need for additional specific-site facilities in her constituency—were that to become necessary, then we have the facilities and we have the experience of moving them rapidly to those places where they are most needed.