The Government aims to introduce population-wide testing for coronavirus, the Health Secretary has said.

Matt Hancock said ministers are “working as fast as we can” to achieve the “moonshot” of mass testing so restrictions can be eased.

Some have called for a mass-testing regime to be adopted to keep levels of Covid-19 in check.

Mr Hancock said: “This is a really, really important drive that we have across Government to bring in mass testing, population-wide testing.

“The new technologies for testing that are coming on stream now are incredibly important. At the moment you have to send off a test to a laboratory and get it back and all the logistics of that takes time, it’s also quite expensive.

"We’re testing some of these right now in Porton Down, in our scientific labs, and the mass testing, population testing, where we make it the norm that people get tested regularly, allowing us therefore to allow some of the freedoms back, is a huge project in Government right now with enormous support.”

But when pressed on the issue, Mr Hancock declined to say when mass testing would be available.

He added: “We’re ramping it up over the remainder of this year.

“I’m not going to put a firm deadline on it. The answer is we’re working as fast as we can.

“This moonshot to have testing ubiquitous and available to re-open all sorts of things to reduce the burden of the quarantine arrangements, which nobody wants to have in place, to allow us to re-open parts of the economy, that is an incredibly important project within Government right now.”

It has been suggested that routine mass testing could see a return of packed sports stadiums and live music events, with other parts of society able to operate more safely.

Initial testing capabilities would not have been able to cope with a population-wide programme – with some tests taking days to be returned.

But some rapid tests provide results in as little as 90 minutes.