Heathrow Airport is partnering NHS Test & Trace on a Government-led scheme to test airport workers in an attempt to prevent any spread of Covid-19.
It will use 20-minute rapid lateral flow tests to stop the spread of the new more contagious strains of the virus and provide insight into how rapid testing can be more widely deployed to keep vital services such as critical national infrastructure running.
The pilot scheme aims to discover how routine testing might be used to help identify asymptomatic cases of Covid in the airport’s workforce to make it quicker and easier to identify and isolate positive cases.
This Government-led pilot will take place over four weeks initially and will involve around 2,000 Heathrow workers running alongside existing measures to tackle the pandemic.
Understanding how new technologies can be used to regularly screen large numbers of people with quick results is key to the Government’s plans to rollout mass testing across society.
The Heathrow scheme will help understand where to best use the technology to help the country go back to a normal way of life as quickly as possible.
Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “We’re pleased to be working with the Government on this pilot testing scheme which goes even further to protect our colleagues and the other key workers who are keeping the country moving through this crisis.
"This pilot will support us as we work to keep the UK’s biggest port running smoothly, helping to facilitate essential journeys and the movement of cargo.”
Baroness Dido Harding, interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, said: “This pilot is one of many which will inform our understanding of how rapid asymptomatic testing can be operationalised in the real world; to protect those at high risk, find the virus and help us go back to as normal a way of life as possible.”
