Pictured: A breakdown of the calculations to work out the rest of this year’s testing budget.
In a response to a question from the Review Panel for Safer Travel Guidelines, the Chief Minister said that Deputy Susie Pinel had provided a ‘letter of comfort’ indicating the additional funds, which Express has requested to see.
However, there is no confirmation of where the funding will be coming from, with the Chief Minister telling the panel that there is an “assumption” that it will come from the Covid Reserve, and that the detailed business cases for it are still being finalised.
Using an average calculated from tests across March 2020 to April 2021 (£27,323,519 for 369,907 tests), the Government say the average cost to them per test is £74 – they could not however give a breakdown for the cost per test for arriving passengers only.
The current spend for testing in the first two quarters of this year is estimated to be £23.9m, across all testing programmes and procedures.
The Chief Minister added that overall cost per test would be down in the second half of this year, due to the island building its own testing capacity which will begin processing tests in July.
Pictured: Indicative costs for the new testing scheme that was introduced in March.
On the topic of charging for tests, he said that it is “being discussed” but that “timing is crucial,” and though it has been decided not to introduce it at this stage, the idea was still “under review.”
Discussing the additional £15m, Chair of the Safer Travel Guidelines Review Panel, Deputy Rob Ward, explained that these figures came after the panel had pushed to find out how testing would be funded for the rest of the year.
“The problem was we only funded for the first six months in the Government Plan, so this seems to be the extra funding that is required,” he said.
Pointing out that the response did not give any “definite” outline of spending, he called for a clear breakdown of what the £15m would be used for, as well as transparency on where the money will go should there be some left over or not needed.
“If we do get a situation where [all the additional fund] isn’t necessary because there’s a lot more vaccination, we need to know that that money isn’t being spent elsewhere – there needs to be accountability for that spend.”
Speaking about how it points to a wider issue about certainty in the testing regime, he said that “strong clear advice” was needed in regards to both the rules for young people and those who are vaccinated.
“You’ve got to make those decisions early, and you’ve got to let the population know where you’re going,” he added.