• Matt Hancock, health and social care secretary, led tonight's press briefing.
• He was joined by Stephen Powis, NHS England's medical director, and John Newton, Public Health England's professor of public health and epidemiology. 
• Mr Hancock announced that all frontline NHS staff will get tests they need by the end of this month and the £13.4bn historic NHS debt will be written off.

The NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said:

" We welcome the commitment to significantly increase testing, but it is clear there is still a lot of work to do to build up enough diagnostic capacity to achieve this.

"Trust leaders will be pleased to hear that the government is now working closely with partners from across the university, research, pharmaceutical and commercial sectors to rapidly grow the facilities and equipment needed to carry out testing in the numbers required.

"Trusts across the country have been rapidly ramping up staff testing and we’re pleased that 5,000 tests have now been carried out. But there are still trusts who are still unable to begin testing and all trusts are being held back due to a lack of swabs, reagents and the test kits required not being available in significant numbers."

Responding to the government’s decision to cancel £13.4bn worth of NHS trust debt Saffron said:

"We welcome today’s announcement on cancelling NHS trust debt, which we have consistently been calling for over several years. We will obviously want to see more detail on how this will work in practice.

"There have been unsustainable levels of debt in the trust sector for some time. The unprecedented pressures created by COVID-19 are placing an even greater strain on trust finances. Additional funding has already been set aside to cover these costs, but the decision to cancel all NHS debt should go a step further in removing any financial constraints in the NHS’s response to COVID-19 and subsequent recovery.

"It was always unrealistic to expect trusts to pay back this debt, even before the outbreak. In writing off £13.4bn worth of debt, the government must ensure there will be no follow up charges for trusts in whatever alternative financial mechanism is used to support trusts who need help with their cashflow."