As the nation battles through lockdown 2 and the latest restrictions, the Royal Borough of Greenwich continues to work with our health and education partners, businesses and residents to do all we can to slow the spread of the virus, protect our most vulnerable residents and keep Greenwich safe.

Cllr Danny Thorpe, Leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich said: “Just like the first lockdown, it’s really important that people know help is available whenever they need it. We have resources right across the Council to make sure we can respond to changes. And we continue to support our residents by providing quick and simple testing via our five COVID-19 centres and a new local contact tracing service to support the NHS Test and Trace offering.

“You may have also seen on the news or read in the press that we have been selected by the UK Government as one of 66 local authorities to receive 10,000 lateral flow tests. With no prior notice, resources or financial support we are doing our best to secure venues, equipment and staff to deliver this new rapid testing.

“However, it will take time to set up this service and we will only be able to do so when we hear from the Department of Health and Social Care what resources they will be providing to support this.”

In the meantime, we encourage everyone to make use of our existing coronavirus testing services including the five COVID-19 testing centres across the borough and a new local contact tracing service ad help keep Greenwich safe.

Mass testing requires residents in the borough that do not have COVID-19 symptoms to be tested.

Each selected authority is due to receive 10,000 tests to help them start testing priority groups, before being given weekly allocations to be able to test 10 per cent of the local population.

The kit consists of a swab of the nose and the back of the throat, with a positive result within the hour. The test looks for the presence of the virus in your body and identifies whether you are infected at the time of taking the test. It is not an antibody test, so it will not be able to tell you if you’ve previously had the infection.

More information

Our five local COVID-19 testing centres

New local contact tracing service

Cllr Danny Thorpe at the Abery Street testing centre

Opening of the Avery Hill testing centre