The negotiator has been holding discussions "about the future of the service” with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) and the NHS for “several weeks”, PSNC director of NHS services Alastair Buxton told C+D today (February 16).

The outcome of these discussions “will depend on the detail of government’s eventual decisions and plans on provision of lateral flow tests”, he added.

 

Read More: Lateral flow test chaos: ‘Tearful’ pharmacy customers, 16-digit code ‘madness’ and patient abuse

 

Healthy adults may no longer be eligible to order free lateral flow tests from the beginning of next month, according to reports in The Times and The Guardian yesterday (February 15).

The government is expected to announce the end of its provision of free COVID-19 testing as part of a strategy setting out how to live safely with COVID-19, which is due to be published next week, the newspapers reported.

 

DH: “No decisions have been made”

 

Responding to the reports, a spokesperson for the DH told C+D today: “We’ve previously set out that we’ll keep the provision of free testing under review as the government’s response to COVID-19 changes.

“No decisions have been made on the provision of free testing. Everyone can continue to get free tests and we are continuing to encourage people to use rapid tests when they need them,” they added.

The UKHSA and NHS England and NHS Improvement have also been approached for comment.

Community pharmacies have handed out 16,955,732 test kits since the Pharmacy Collect service launched in March last year.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters yesterday that is “clear” that Omicron is less dangerous than other variants, when asked if there was evidence to back up plans to relax all restrictions in England.

However, he did not respond when asked whether the provision of lateral flow testing kits would continue to remain free across all parts of the UK.

 

Read more: Scotland and Wales simplify COVID test kits claim process for pharmacies

 

Last month, PSNC announced that community pharmacy teams could request up to three additional cartons of COVID-19 lateral flow device test kits, after demand for them started to wane.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of January, PSNC told C+D that despite delivering two million tests to pharmacy wholesalers “on some days”, UKHSA was “still falling short of demand”.

 

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