England's Covid test rules are set to be relaxed as soon as today in a drive to ease critical worker shortages and demand for tests.
Ministers are looking at plans to axe follow-up PCR tests for those who test positive by lateral flow, but have no symptoms.
This will mean people will no longer need to wait for a PCR result, which can take several days.
Those who are asymptomatic, thought to be around 40 percent of cases, will be able to return back to work much quicker.
The change - which would also also ease the demand for PCR tests - is expected to be announced today, Sky News reports.
More than 1.2 million people are isolating after testing positive for Covid in the last week - as many still wait for PCR results.
Last week the Manchester Evening News reported that PCR tests were completely unavailable across the country, with results being severely delayed due to the surge in demand.
It comes as some non-urgent surgeries and appointments at 17 Greater Manchester hospitals have been delayed due to staff shortages.
This morning, Health Minister Gillian Keegan strongly hinted test rules will be relaxed after reports overnight.
She told BBC Breakfast: "I know the teams are looking at testing and testing regimes.
"We’ve introduced so many lateral flow tests now, and they’re very accurate, they’re really accurate in people who are infectious.
"So I guess they’re looking at the regimes all the time in terms of what makes sense.
"I don’t have any official news, but the teams will announce it once they have come to their conclusions.
"You may be able to expect some news, I don’t know when."
She went on to urge people to 'do the right thing' and register their lateral flow test result whether it is positive or negative.
Bin collections are also being delayed, while trains have been cancelled and school leaders say they are preparing for online lessons to resume in the near future as children's education suffers, reports the Mirror .
At a Downing Street press conference yesterday Boris Johnson admitted staff shortages were causing "serious disruption".
He went on to extend 'Plan B' measures currently in place, adding: "We can keep our schools and our businesses open, and we can find a way to live with this virus. But the weeks ahead are going to be challenging – both here in the UK and across the world."
From next week, the Prime Minister announced that 100,000 critical workers in areas such as food processing, transport and the Border Force would be offered daily lateral flow tests.
Currently those who test positive on a lateral flow test but have no symptoms are asked to order a PCR test and can only begin their isolation period when they receive that result.
People can also see their isolation period cut from 10 to seven days if they get a negative LFT result on their sixth and seventh day of isolation.
It comes as the health minister said “about one million” people are currently in isolation because of coronavirus.
Speaking to Sky News, she said: "We don’t actually collect that data on a daily basis but it is obvious if you look at how many people tested positive yesterday – it was about 215,000 – that they will all be self-isolating obviously from the previous days.
"So, it is about one million probably who are self-isolating right now."
Asked why the UK Government did not have the exact data, Ms Keegan replied: “We get the tested positive … figures, so you can add those up over the days, but what we don’t know is how many people after day six and day seven have tested negative and are free to leave isolation.
“So, it is around about a million people though.”
