Royal Mail and Amazon battle for £550m home testing contract

Royal Mail and Amazon are scrambling to seize control of Boris Johnson’s “Operation Moonshot” programme to deliver 215,000 home testing kits a day.

The duo are this weekend finalising rival bids to win a £550m, one-year contract from the taxpayer to spearhead home testing as part of NHS Test and Trace.

The Department for Health has given operators four days warning, prompting a frenzied effort to submit bids ahead of a deadline on Tuesday.

Along with delivering 215,000 home testing kits every day, seven days of Covid test “buffer stock” must be held. Up to four tests can be delivered to each household every day, official filings reveal.