Royal Mail has been awarded a contract from Department of Health and Social Care to deliver additional COVID-19 test kits to households across the UK, seven days a week*. The contract will run alongside Royal Mail Group’s existing agreement to deliver test kits to and collect them from care homes, regional test centres and priority postboxes – a role it has carried out since April 2020.
Royal Mail recently announced a groundbreaking expansion to collections of completed test kits from over 15,000 priority postboxes**. Collections will now be made from these priority postboxes on a Sunday. Royal Mail has also increased the number of priority postboxes in its network that have collections 6 days a week to over 35,000, providing increased convenience for those returning tests. People can find their closest priority postboxes through the Royal Mail website or app.
Royal Mail has been a key partner for the Government’s COVID-19 testing programme. The Company has been delivering tens of millions of COVID-19 tests to and collecting them from addresses across the UK since April 2020.
Nick Landon, Chief Commercial Officer at Royal Mail, said: “Since April, we have played a crucial role in delivering and collecting millions of test kits from care homes, test centres and our network of priority postboxes before returning them to labs to help the country’s fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. Now, the Government has asked us to play an equally important role in home deliveries for customers who request a test kit through the NHS. We could not be prouder to support the Government’s fight against the pandemic. All of our posties know that when the country asks, we deliver.”
