The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Royal Leamington Spa is expected to create around 1,500 skilled jobs for the area and will be capable of processing hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 samples every day. More than 300 are already employed at the lab with another 700 joining in the near future.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it has equipped the lab with cutting-edge technology to process even more tests and adopt new ‘genotype assay’ testing to quickly identify variants of concern and new mutations.
It is at the heart of the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) plans for the next phase of the battle against the pandemic.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “Trailblazing technologies are going to be pivotal to delivering on this bold ambition and I’m delighted that today we are bolstering our capabilities in testing and genomic sequencing with the opening of the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory.
“This laboratory will be one of the centrepieces...