The UK government has pledged more funding for COVID-19 testing facilities in order to tackle the threat of new variants of the CCP virus, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Wednesday. The government will invest £29.3 million ($40.7 million) in new testing facilities run by Public Health England (PHE) at Porton Down, which will speed up testing of vaccines tailored for new COVID-19 variants. This will add to the £19.7 million ($27.4 million) investment in the vaccine testing facility approved in September 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said. The testing centre currently tests 700 blood samples every week. The extra funding will increase its capacity to 3,000 tests per week. “The UK has proven itself to be a world-class force in the production of COVID-19 vaccines, with the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Valneva vaccines all researched, developed, or manufactured on British soil,” said Hancock. “We’ve backed UK …