- The population of Liverpool will be offered regular Covid-19 tests in the first pilot of whole city testing in England.
Everyone living or working in the city will be offered them - whether they have symptoms or not.
The aim is to limit spread of the virus by identifying as many infected people as possible, and taking action to break chains of transmission.
Liverpool has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 deaths in England.
The latest figures show the city recorded 1,754 cases in the week of 24-30 October, with 351 cases per 100,000 people. The average area in England had 153.
The city and surrounding region was the first part of England to go into tier three restrictions.
The pilot will start this week and will include a mix of existing swab tests and new lateral flow tests, which can provide a result within an hour without the need to use a lab.
New test sites will be set up across the city, including in care homes, schools, universities and workplaces. People will be able to book online, turn up in person, or wait for an invitation from the local authority.
Around 2,000 military personnel will help to plan the logistics of the pilot, and to deliver tests across the city.
Announcing the pilot, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "These tests will help identify the many thousands of people in the city who don't have symptoms but can still infect others without knowing.
"Dependent on their success in Liverpool, we will aim to distribute millions of these new rapid tests between now and Christmas and empower local communities to use them to drive down transmission in their areas.
"It is early days, but this kind of mass testing has the potential to be a powerful new weapon in our fight against COVID-19."
You can spread coronavirus before you even feel sick. That's why testing everyone - symptoms or not - can be such as powerful tool for getting on top of the virus.
China has shown it is possible to test entire cities of millions of people.
However, there are questions with both the tests used and the strategy as a whole.
Rapid or "lateral flow" tests need high levels of the virus in the body in order to work. It is not yet clear how good they are at catching people in the early stages of the infection when the virus is still taking hold.
False positives - when you don't have the virus, but the test says you do - are also a bigger problem when you test large numbers of people. One analysis suggested a twice-a-week test for six months using a test with a 1% false positive rate would lead to more than 40% of people being wrongly told they had the virus.
But even a perfect test cannot change the course of Covid on its own.
There is already an issue with too few people fully isolating even when they have Covid symptoms and have tested positive.
Will people isolate when they have no symptoms at all or will they even come forward for testing if it might mean missing work and pay?
The UK's first attempt at city-wide testing will help find the answers.
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from Via PakapNews