Plymouth to process up to 40,000 COVID-19 tests each day by new year
It's thanks to a new Lighthouse Lab which has just been approved
A new Lighthouse Lab has also now been approved in Plymouth, which is set to join the network in the new year.
When fully operational it will have the capacity to process up to 40,000 COVID-19 tests each day.
Nearly 3,000 new recruits have joined the lab network since April, while advances in innovation and technology continue to speed up processing and add to capacity.
The Plymouth lab will be operated by University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.
It comes as new figures from the Department of Health and Social Care show that NHS Test and Trace is managing a record number of cases.
More than 30 million tests have been processed since the programme was launches, and more than 1.4 million people have been reached by contact tracers.
Latest figures also show that the NHS COVID-19 app has been downloaded more than 19 million times since it was launched.