Heathrow Airport is to launch a month-long pilot project to regularly test 2,000 staff for Covid.
The airport is working with NHS Test and Trace on the scheme, which will use rapid lateral flow tests and is intended to help stop the spread of the new more contagious strain of the virus by identifying asymptomatic cases.
Participants will be provided with testing kits which they will be able to drop off at convenient locations across the airport before their shifts with results returned in 20 minutes. Anyone testing positive will be required to take a PCR test and they will be instructed to self-isolate in line with NHS guidance.
The airport has already invested in UV robots, UV handrail technology and anti-viral wraps as well as Perspex screens, hand sanitiser dispensers, hygiene technicians and Covid marshals in a bid to stop the spread of the virus.
“These pilots will help to ensure the country has the resource needed to keep the UK’s critical national infrastructure open and operational,” the airport said.
Heathrow CEO 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."
Baroness Dido Harding, interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, said: “This is a national effort and a partnership of public and private sectors. Around one in three people with Covid-19 don’t display symptoms, meaning you can infect others unknowingly.
"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.”