NHS heroes will begin being tested for coronavirus this weekend.
Medics have been pleading for the coronavirus tests to be made available to hospital workers for weeks.
Doctors and nurses warned the frontline fight was being impaired by staff being forced to self-isolate over suspected Covid-19 symptoms - but there were not enough tests available to confirm their diagnoses.
However at a Downing Street news conference on Friday, senior Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said hundreds of antigen tests - which check whether people currently have the disease - would finally be given to frontline staff this weekend.
He delivered the daily Number 10 press conference last night after both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Minister Matt Hancock tested positive for coronavirus.
Public Health England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty yesterday confirmed he too would be self-isolating after he began experiencing Covid-19 symptoms.
Mr Gove said testing of frontline staff would escalate "dramatically" next week.
Ambulance crews, paramedics and GPs would be next in line.
The testing would later be expanded to cover social care staff, Mr Gove added.
It comes as scientists work to get 3.5million antibody tests ready to rollout nationwide.
The tests, which are still in development, are hoped to be able to determine who has already had coronavirus.
Frontline health staff would be prioritised for those tests too once they were ready, the government says.
The tests would then be rolled out to the wider general public, but Prof Whitty warned it would not be a 'free-for-all' and those most in need would be prioritised.
NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said last night that across England there are now 33,000 hospital beds available to treat coronavirus patients.
Currently, there are 6,200 confirmed Covid-19 patients being treated in England's hospitals and he said that number is "only bound to rise in the coming days".
Sir Simon said that as of Thursday, there were just under 3,000 empty and available hospital beds in London, and there would be additional beds next week at the new NHS Nightingale Hospital being built at the ExCel centre in east London.
Further NHS Nightingale hospitals are being built in Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre and Manchester's Central Convention Centre "with further such hospitals to follow", he said.
Sir Simon praised NHS staff, saying tests were coming for them this week, and adding that in the last two weeks more than 18,000 former staff including doctors and nurses have signed up to return to the front line.
