Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs

Central Services & Contingency Planning - COVID-19 Update, 11 May 2020

• AFBI in collaboration with Queens University Belfast and Ulster University are supporting the Department of Health’s efforts in respect of Covid-19 testing
• An SLA with the Belfast Trust has now been signed.
• Final testing of the process is scheduled for 11 May 2020 and following sign-off by the Belfast Trust Quality Assurance Panel a date for the commencement of testing will be agreed.
• AFBI hope to achieve 1000 tests per day when fully operational.
• Testing has been scheduled for an initial period of 12 weeks.
• The release of staff to work on Covid-19 testing is currently planned so as not to impact on the priority animal health and food safety testing programmes. This will, however, be kept under close review.