The statement from Sharon Stoltz, Director of Public Health, has appeared on the Council's website this afternoon.

It reads as follows:

We can confirm that City of York Council has not rejected the offer of mass testing and in fact, we are working to develop our proposals for introducing mass testing in the city.

Directors of Public Health have been asked to submit expressions of interest to test 10% of our local population on a weekly rolling basis, which will mean testing approximately 20,000 residents every week in York. 
 
This is something new that we have never done before and so we wanted to take time to plan how this new testing programme can be delivered effectively and in a safe way. Anyone testing positive will need to be referred into our local contact tracing service and so, we also need some time to expand the service in order to accept more referrals.  
 
We are currently taking on board learning from the approach taken in Liverpool and we are working on our ‘expression of interest’ proposals, which will be presented to the Outbreak Management Advisory Board next week for consideration, after which the proposal will be submitted to the Department for Health and Social Care.
 
In the meantime, anyone with symptoms of coronavirus can arrange a free test by visiting https://www.nhs.uk/coronavirus or calling 119"