Thank you to everyone who has participated in the Southampton COVID-19 Testing Programme over the last seven months.
We’re delighted to announce that, as a result of our work on saliva testing in Southampton, the programme is now expanding. You’ll soon see it referred to as The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Saliva Testing Programme, but there won’t be any impact on your participation. It will continue to focus on weekly asymptomatic testing in educational settings, but will grow to include more schools, colleges and universities in the local area.
To facilitate this expansion, a new testing facility has been built. This facility will process thousands of tests a day – a large increase on our current capacity. The programme continues to be funded by the UK government, but it will now be led by University Hospital Southampton.
As we transition to this new facility, we will be working hard to ensure that there is no disruption for students and staff at the University of Southampton. Please keep following your text message instructions, and contact the existing enquiries team if you have any questions.
A small team will continue to focus on testing at the University, including local logistics and communications, and they will update students and staff if there is an opportunity to expand testing as a result of the new capacity.
Your participation in the early stages of this programme has been vital to slowing the spread of the virus in Southampton, and your feedback has helped to shape a service that can now be rolled out to a much larger number of pupils, teachers, students and university staff – so thank you.
Professor Keith Godfrey, who led the pilot programme, said: “We can be proud that what we started here in Southampton back in April is now expanding to benefit schools, colleges and universities across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. This will give greater confidence to pupils and students who continue to be taught face-to-face, and those who will return after the current lockdown measures are lifted.”
You can find some stats about the programme in our December SUSSED update.
The saliva testing programme team
