Supermarket giant Tesco has announced changes to its home delivery service as it strives to help this most at risk during the coronavirus crisis.
Tesco CEO Dave Lewis has revealed the store has created 600,000 new home delivery slots, starting this week.
At the start of the crisis, Tesco was able to offer 400,000 home deliveries per week.
This week, however, Tesco said it has the capacity to deliver to one million homes across the UK.
It has also pledged to up that figure to 1.2m soon.
The CEO said: “Ensuring we support our most vulnerable customers is our priority.”
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He added: “This week we have almost one million delivery slots, which is around 400,000 more than we had six weeks ago.”
Increasing delivery slots
Lewis also said: “We’ll increase this to 1.2 million deliveries per week in the next few weeks.”
Tesco has also explained it is working with the government to prioritise those most at risk.
We’ll increase this to 1.2 million deliveries per week in the next few weeks.
“The government has given us a list of who they consider to be vulnerable people. We’re offering those people priority access to delivery slots,” a statement read.
“We’re also now actively working with the government to see how we can increase our capacity to help an expanded list of people who might not be on their critical vulnerable list, but who might need our support,” it added.
Dave Lewis also repeated the plea for those who aren’t classed as vulnerable to shop in store to keep the slots free for those who need them the most.
Coronavirus testing
In other Tesco news, the store has revealed that it will start testing its workers for COVID-19.
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Trial testing for workers in one undisclosed region of the UK will start this week.
Testing will be voluntary, and only for critical workers currently experiencing symptoms, or for those with symptoms who are living with critical workers.
Tesco said that it plans to roll out testing more widely.
The store is also planning on donating £15 million worth of food to community groups and food banks over the next three months.
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