Coronavirus testing 'increasing every week' in Wales

The Welsh Government is "working very hard" to increase coronavirus testing capacity, the first minister has said.

Mark Drakeford said a community testing regime will be put in place over the next three weeks.

There is currently the capacity to do 2,350 tests a day in Wales.

A leaked Public Health Wales (PHW) report suggested about 30,000 tests a day may be needed in a track and trace programme but the government believes much fewer tests will be needed.

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PHW has since said its analysis now suggests the number of tests needed would be in the range of 7,500 to 17,000 daily tests but that 10,000 tests a day would be a "realistic requirement".

Mr Drakeford said: "We are working with our public health organisation here in Wales to prepare for the day when we need that test trace isolate regime.

"We are increasing the number of tests available every week here in Wales.

"I don't believe that the final report that we will see from PHW will have that 30,000 figure because that was if absolutely everybody needed to be tested and there were no other aspects of a regime in place.

"But there is a gap to be closed and we're working very hard to close it. The regime will need to be different.

"At the moment we just test key workers, people in care homes, people in hospitals, and we will be moving into community testing, we'll be using the next three weeks to get that regime firmly in place."

Wales and England have different policies on testing and Wales has not fixed a daily target for the number of tests carried out.

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