DISCUSSIONS are ongoing between Cheshire East Council and the government over expanding community Covid-19 testing in the borough.

Prof Rod Thomson, who is a public health consultant for the council revealed that the authority has "an expression of interest with the Department for Health and Social Care to allow those individuals who have to leave home for work" more access to community testing.

Prof Thomson made his comments at a CEC health and well-being board meeting on Tuesday 26 January.

He went on to tell the committee that two proposals are on the table, which would see the borough work with pharmacies to deliver tests, with the other "utilising the existing permanent sites in Crewe and Macclesfield to make lateral flow tests available to the population".

In a subsequent statement to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Prof Thomson added: "We think that both models will provide good access for the borough given the number of market towns that we have and our largely rural communities.

"The geographic spread of Cheshire East means that we wanted more mobile and flexible options to make it easy for people to access testing, hence the dual use sites, pharmacy model and a mobile testing team. All of these will enable residents and key workers to access testing easily and regularly.

"In the first phase of making community testing more accessible, we would be focusing on workers whose jobs cannot be carried out from home. Our proposal to utilise pharmacies as well as the Crewe and Macclesfield sites should assist such workers, particularly those whose companies don't currently have their own testing arrangements in place."

Lateral flow tests (LFTs) are designed to identify asymptomatic cases of coronavirus, and can deliver results in as little as 30 minutes.

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In December, Cheshire East received 10,000 LFT kits as part of a pilot scheme targeting emergency service workers, hospice staff, and schoolchildren, among others.